Do Business Well

Having carefully assessed your own situation, and the type of accommodation you can offer, what can you expect of your prospective clients?

The flat and bed-sitter brigade

Provided you have a proper lease drawn up, renting out part of the house as a flat is the most trouble free way of having people under your roof. Failing that, properly equipped bed-sitting rooms should bring you equally trouble-free tenants. You need, of course, to have a large house to do this. And you may have to spend out capital in the first place to equip the accommodation. But over the months you should quickly recoup your outlay.

Lodgers, or paying guests

Many different categories of people want to rent rooms as lodgers, sharing your kitchen to prepare their own meals. There are businessmen and women who find themselves working away from home, for instance. In this case they will tend to go off early in the morning, come home early evening and perhaps go out again, and be away at weekends. This category of paying guest is probably the most trouble-free, and should have no difficulty meeting the rent. But if you want someone to chat to from time to time, you may well be out of luck.

Single 9 to 5 workers come next in the trouble-free stakes. They tend to be around at weekends but are likely to have organised themselves a fairly heavy social life and will, therefore, not be under your feet all the time. Both these categories can be taken in without impinging much on your daily life. Both are likely to need somewhere safe to park a car.

The third category are people without regular hours. Students, for instance, who may be at home studying for part of the day, and professionals — people who work all kinds of shifts round the clock — actors, journalists, social workers, probation officers, doctors and nurses in particular. Their presence in your house would be more noticeable than in the case of the 9 to 5 set. Renee, an ex-nurse, specialises in taking in people from the local hospital, for instance.

I like to have students or young doctors staying with me,’ she says. ‘It keeps me in touch with the medical world and we can talk the same shop. I also understand the long, erratic hours they have to work, something that some landladies would find difficult to come to terms with.’

Many of Renee’s lodgers are on night duty some of the time. She has them on a paying guest basis, but also provides meals for most of them — often at unusual hours — supper as late as 10 or 11 o’clock at night, for instance.

`If they’re really going to be late, I leave some soup to be heated up and sandwiches,’ says Renee, who has never married and feels that her students are her ‘family’. ‘I agonise with them over exam results, and if somebody fails, I feel as bad about it as if it’s happening to me!’

Bed and breakfast

Bed and breakfast, whether it is on a regular or just a short-term basis will bring in more cash than lodgers or straightforward letting, provided you have a good supply of people to draw on. And since you are probably getting breakfast for the family every day, it adds very little extra work.

To make bed and breakfast really successful, it’s best to have a separate bathroom for your visitors, or at least a washbasin in their room, so they don’t collide with the rest of a household in the morning rush. And you’ll need a good supply of bed linen and sheets — as I’ve already said, the non-iron, quick drying polyester/cotton mix is best. Bed and breakfast means just that, and you are not obliged to provide a separate sitting room with TV. But if you are going for long-term stays, then you will need, probably, to put a small television set in the bedroom.

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