Letting In Crete Ian Woods and his wife are making the most of their villa, and making some money via holiday lets.
AddThis Meet The Buyers Name: Ian Woods Occupation: Chef Contact: i.wood300@ntlworld. com, www.villarenters.com The Woods' original plan was to buy a villa on their favourite holiday island of Crete to spend their holidays in and then retire to. The decision to let came later. Having found their dream home, Ian and his wife then realised that leaving it empty for long periods might not be the best idea, both in terms of financial return and looking after the property. Q: What made you decide to move to Crete? A: Myself and my wife have been holidaying in Crete for over 20 years and it had always been our dream to own a property, which we eventually intend to retire to. It wasn’t until last year we decided to take the plunge. As a rule we always used to holiday on the eastern side of the island, but last year we booked to stay near Rethmyno, one of Crete’s main towns, and it was from here we started our search. Q: Where is your property and what is it like?
The Woods' villa. A: Our villa is on a plot of land with four others on the outskirts of a small village, approximately 12 kilometres from Rethmyno and all its amenities. The property is approximately five years old and is a three-bedroom detached villa, with an open-plan living space and kitchen, a downstairs and upstairs bathroom, balcony, veranda and private swimming pool. There are a couple of supermarkets closer than Rethymno for groceries and it’s just two kilometres from the nearest beach. Q: How did you find your villa? A: I started by looking on the internet for estate agents on the eastern side of the island and made appointments for us to visit several properties with them. We looked at about seven properties and plots of land but nothing we saw had that special ‘X’ factor. Somewhat disheartened at not finding anything we finished our holiday and came home. Once back in England I decided to look for estate agents around Rethmyno and came across a website called Euroimmo Investments and there it was, our dream home. We made arrangements to return a couple of months later, and although we had a look at some more properties around Rethmyno, as soon as we saw this one in the flesh we both knew it was for us. Q: How easy was the property purchase? A: The couple selling the property were English so there were no language problems there. Our agent Nikos (who speaks very good English) could not do enough for us. The first thing we had to do was set up a Greek bank account as we wanted our mortgage from a Greek bank. We walked into the bank and just asked to open an account, it was that easy! Nikos himself came with us a couple of days later to help us secure the best mortgage, and basically that was that. He recommended a solicitor to deal with the paperwork and she handled everything brilliantly. Everything went very smoothly indeed, and I was always kept informed of what was going on once we returned to England. Q: What made you decide to let your home? A: We had already done our sums regarding the mortgage repayments and knew we could afford the mortgage without letting out the villa, so initially we didn’t consider letting. But then we thought why leave a villa empty doing nothing with no-one to look after it? That’s when we decided if we can find someone to handle the bookings and take care of the garden, pool and general maintenance, as well as paying the bills, we might as well see if we can rent it out to help cover our costs. So we got in touch with Nikos again and he gave us the address of a property management company in Crete that dealt with all aspects of maintenance and payments.
The Woods' villa is a haven of peace and tranquility with its own private pool. Q: How did you go about finding clients? A: Once I’d found a property management team, I then started to research the best way of advertising the villa. After trawling the internet (again) I came across a company called Villarenters. It seemed the perfect setup. I could advertise my villa in Crete through Villarenters for free and they even let you set up your own web page at no extra charge, allowing me to feature photos of our villa. The web page is very easy to do yourself and allows you to edit the contents whenever you want. Within three months of my advertising through Villarenters I had a couple of bookings. Villarenters dealt with all the bookings I received this year and if someone booked the villa, Villarenters let me know immediately whether by a text message or via my web page. Once the booking was accepted they would automatically make the dates unavailable to avoid double bookings. They dealt with all the payments from guests, so I didn’t have to worry about anything. Villarenters did it all and I cannot thank them enough. Q: Have you made enough to cover your costs for the property? A: This year, which is my first, I have received six bookings through Villarenters and although it didn’t yield a great deal, it was enough to cover my management costs. Q: What advice would you give potential buyers? A: If I was to offer any advice to people wanting to buy or let a property abroad, I’d say don’t jump in feet first, you will know when something feels right. This feature comes from one of our Red Guide titles, the definitive handbooks to the overseas property market - why not buy one today?