CYPRUS
Letting your property
Left to right: “My house is your house”, as they say in Cyprus
Advertising with pictures like this certainly helps to get the bookings in
GETTING READY TO RENT, IN CYPRUS
Preparing a holiday home abroad for the rental market takes a lot of organising, especially when you live in the UK. We asked reader and rental-virgin Rowena Sait how she maximised her time in Cyprus when she visited last month to kit out her new townhouse for paying holidaymakers
WORDS ROWENA SAIT PHOTOGRAPHS MARK BECKER
W
ith one suitcase packed with clothes and the other fi lled up with a double duvet, bed
linen, pillowcases, a fi rst aid kit and a PlayStation 2, my partner and I were on our way to Cyprus to set our property up for holiday rentals. Having taken delivery of the
property back in August 2010 we were initially hoping to fi nd long-term tenants. However, we didn’t have many enquiries, so we decided to let the property out as a holiday home instead. After all, it is in the ideal place for vacations. It is close to Paphos airport, the sea, beaches and Paphos town, surrounded by beautiful countryside and golf courses. Plus, the resort has three swimming pools for guests to use, sunbathing terraces and a communal park with wonderful views. It’s the ideal setting and base for a holiday in Cyprus, so all we needed to do was make sure our property was ready to go.
Furnishing and Equipping It’s one thing equipping your holiday home for personal use, but an entirely different matter when you’re looking to rent the property to paying holidaymakers. We were working with a very tight budget and not much time in Cyprus, so we had to come up with
all kinds of ways to keep costs down. Even so, we wanted to make sure it appealed to all types of tourists, from families, to couples, to golfers. It’s also vitally important when renting your property to make sure it has all the correct health and safety equipment. We only had a week in Cyprus to arrange all the furnishings so we ordered a furniture package via Karen from Furniture Direct by Steptoes (
www.steptoes.biz). Karen emailed me the different packages available and we chose the reasonably priced Milano Pack. This came with bedroom furniture (double bed, two single beds, mattresses, chest of drawers and bedside cabinets) and lounge and dining furniture (two sofa beds, coffee table, entertainment unit, lamp table, dining table and four dining chairs). As our stay in Cyprus was so short,
we confi rmed the furniture package prior to leaving the UK and made payment via currency transfer specialist HIFX (
www.hifx.co.uk). We also arranged for the property management company we had already chosen, CP Home Services (
www.cphomeservices.com), to take delivery of the furniture. This meant that when we arrived in Cyprus everything was set up and ready to go. CP Home Services also fi tted timers on our water heater, as previously
JUNE 2011 A PLACE IN THE SUN 63
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