Free advertsing sites & receiving rental income

To optimise the rental of my property I currently advertise with a main agent but also with some of the free online advertising websites.  Although I am prepared to rent my property I am a little aprehensive to let out my property following a booking from one of the free rental websites as this is not controlled as closely as the estate agent I am also using.  Can anyone alert me to any of the pitfalls they have either experienced themselves or heard of when using a free advertising websites.

In addition please could anyone advise of the best way to receive any money from a booking which is not through an agent and comes directly to myself.  I have looked into Paypal and there is a small fee, which I am willing to pay for a secure service but would appreciate any other information anyone has to offer.

Thanks

Karen

Hi Karen

In our experience (8 years) you are much better off doing your own letting via rental sites than you are with a large percentage of the agents and will certainly end up with more money in your pocket!  This year in particular you need to cast your net much wider than UK travellers, who will have very limited funds - on the whole customers from the eurozone will not expect to pay fewer euros than they did last year but if you let in sterling your sterling will be worth much less if you are using it to pay your Spanish bills. 

In order to do it yourself you need to have someone locally who will meet and greet, take security deposit (TOTALLY ESSENTIAL  IF YOU WANT TO AVOID PROBLEMS), clean and do laundry.  Then because you need to be targetting the Spanish market you also need this person to speak enough Spanish to communicate with them.  We do use a booking form which is combined with our Terms and Conditions but even so we never let to anyone that we haven't already had a few email communications with and preferably have spoken to as well.  We have been helping some friends locally to get Spanish bookings for several years and we simply do not believe the myth that they always arrive with twice the number of people stated and trash the place.   If you want any more info about how we go about it, feel free to send me a pm.

There is no real need to use Paypal or anyone else - a bank transfer is  efficient and cost free to you and to most of your customers both in Spain and UK

I agree with Jane. This was our first year renting and all of our bookings came from the free websites, none from the paid ads!! We managed 10 weeks this year which suited us. Only one family turned up with one extra (the grandmother) and the toilet seat was unfortunately broken. All monies were paid by bank transfer in Euros to our Spanish bank. We offer the ability to pay with Paypal, but no one took us up on that. Our keyholders met the guests on arrival and took the cash security deposit. The keyholders also live on site so see the guests on a regular basis. The keyholder also inspects the property on the last day and returns the cash deposit.

One of the free websites also offers a booking calendar. If guests book through that calendar, they can also pay by credit card.

HTH

Mark

Is it possible to let me know which free sites have generated you bookings. New to this so any pointers would be most helpful.

By far the best is niumba.com but you need to be able (or have someone who is able) to communcate with the potential customers in Spanish as 99% of the replies are from Spanish people and most do not speak English.  It is free and it generates most of our enquiries and a very large percentage of our bookings.

Next best and very low cost is segundamano.es which is a sort of Dalton's Weekly on line.  Costs about €10 for an insertion for 2 months but you need to refresh it every couple of weeks which is a text costing €1.70, I think.  If you don't refresh it, it drops way down the list.  Again, Spanish is essential.

Between these two sites we regularly fill June through August for 3 apartments belonging to friends and our own villa.

I am on several free English sites and get precisely nothing from any of them.

See my post on this thread for just about everything else you need to know.

Thanks for the info. I've put my property on Niumba I've even written the advert in all languages! The wonders of the internet. Lets hope they only ask me questions in English. lol! I'll  let you know how I get on.

Hello Jane b, Thanks for Info ..... I will try put mine on ,,,,,,,,, One more thing If I put in details of property in English , Spanish person replies and it translate in to english for me to read ?. I wonder .  

Thanks 

acune. 

Try the google translator. It's not perfect but almost! You would definately know what is written.

it helped me out alot in the past!

I used the translator and have details in all languages covered by this site. Keep your written description in English straight forward. Short sentances work better. If a word doesn't translate use another. I had problems with 'gated'. Probably not good English. Changed it to gate and it translated. Only took just over an hour yesterday to put it into Spanish, French, German etc

And spelling correctly, just noticed an error in my previous post!

Hi Kev how did you get actually change it to the different languages.Pat.

I entered the text in English, then did a Spanish translation, copy and pasted into Niumba on the Spanish section, then went back to my english text and picked the next language to translate into and repeated the process.

Hi Kev Thanks for the reply l will give it ago, easier said than done Pat.

another site is for pet takers

first 50 non uk are FREE

PM  me for info