What To Do If You Want To Rent Out Your Home For The Summer

If you’ve got plans this summer time, and you’ll also have a home sitting empty while you’re off on your adventures, why not make yourself some extra money by renting out it for the time you’re away? 

You can easily turn your property into a vacation rental for anyone who wants to visit, no matter where your home is located or how far away it might be from the city center. 

After all, you just need a nice space that you can pop up on a temporary rental website. And once it’s posted, you’re likely to get an enquiry or two within the week! 

Of course, if you live in a popular tourist destination and your property is located close enough to the biggest attractions, you could actually get hundreds of hits within the same time period!

But before you get any of this underway, it’s important to have a look around your home and think about what you’ll need to do to welcome in some seasonal tenants. 

And we’re not just talking about a few repairs or some DIY projects either! Here’s a checklist of the necessary admin work you’ll have to tick off if you want to rent out your home for the summer ahead.

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Clear Up

Of course, you’re going to need to make your home as clean and tidy as possible before you welcome in any seasonal tenants. You want them to embrace the space as their own while they’re in town, so they have a better time, leave a better review, and are more than happy to pay the price you’re asking. 

And that just won’t happen if there’s a bit of mold on the kitchen grouting, or you haven’t cleaned the gutters out the front in a good couple of years. And that means you’ve got some work to do before you set off on your own vacation! 

We do have a quick checklist for you to go through here, so don’t worry about trying to do a deep clean without having any idea! 

We recommend focusing on these areas around your home:

• The bathroom: Just in general really! But more specifically, make sure you deep clean the bath and shower, and clean out the plugholes for both. You should also take the toilet seat off of the toilet and clean out the connectors, as they can collect a lot of crud without you even realizing. 
• The kitchen: Clean inside all appliances, and be sure to lift up any floor-set appliance so you can vacuum underneath them. You may also want to mop the floor and the ceiling, to make sure grease patterns have been removed from both. 
• The bedrooms: Make sure mattresses have been cleaned, steamed, and turned over. Make sure bedding has been washed and dried, and is easily accessible wherever it’s been stored.

This is another important thing for us to point out right now. You’re not going to be at home for a good period of time, and you can’t be sure what your seasonal tenants are going to do and/or find while they’re in your home. 

As such, you should remove as many valuables as you can, and anything sentimental should be put away. 

Family photos, for example, should be taken down and put into storage, and anything you inherited as a family heirloom should be wrapped up and locked away in a space like the attic.

Get the Right Lease Drawn Up

You’re not going to have tenants in the house for longer than a month or two at a time, as you’re only keeping them around for the season. That’s a simple fact around your rental arrangement, but it needs to be a legal one too. 

And while you’re away on vacation, or staying with family on the other side of the country, you need to be sure both you and your tenants know where you stand with one another. You certainly don’t want to come home at the end of the summer and find they’re still not packed up and nowhere near ready to go!

So you’re going to want to get the right lease drawn up ASAP, and to double check it’s been signed and dated by the tenants in question before you leave them to their own devices. 

You can put together a short term rental lease here, as that’s the simplest form of tenancy agreement you can go with. 

However, you could also make use of a month to month lease agreement for longer summer rentals, especially if neither you or the tenant are 100% sure whether or not they want to stay longer. A month to month agreement lets you play it by ear with a bit more financial security for each party. 

Take Photos at the Right Time

If you want summer tenants, your home needs to look like a good place to be during the summer! When the time comes that you want to take photos for the listing, make sure you do so when the sun is out and there’s plenty of blue sky to be seen. 

Take snaps of the house from the front exterior, and try to get as much of the facade in the shot as you can. Then snap from the back yard, so your tenants know where they can relax in a bit more privacy. 

You also want to grab shots of each of the rooms, so the sleeping set up is clear to see, and they know what mod-cons they have in the kitchen, living room, and bathroom. 

Make Money Off of Your Home This Summer

It’s easier to do so than you might think! You just need to have the space going spare, and be willing to clear it out for people to use as a temporary home while they’re on vacation. And if you can do both, you’re good to rent out your place for the sunny season!