Selling a Holiday Home Privately
If your circumstances have changed or you have decided to go abroad for the remainder of your holiday years, you may want to sell your holiday home.
There are a couple of ways you are able to go forward and sell your holiday home;
- Sell your holiday home off-site to a trader or another private customer who may want a holiday home to stay in temporarily whilst they complete a home build.
- Sell your holiday home on-site to another new owner who would like a familiar holiday destination here in the UK. This is what we would refer to as a private sale.
Selling your holiday home on site is easier than one would think. There are a couple of things you should take into consideration before jumping into the sale of your beloved holiday home which we will talk about below.
Getting started
Congratulations, if you are reading this, you’re already on your way to selling your holiday home.
Nobody can actually guarantee when, who to or even how much your holiday home will sell for, but if you are reading this, you will have a better idea of how you can execute the on-site private sale of your holiday home.
Lots of people prefer to go all in and advertise their holiday homes themselves by creating a post on social media and then sharing that post to generate interest. Many other people would like to let somebody else take care of that for them and pay a company like Luna Private Sales to advertise on their behalf.
By paying a company like us to help you advertise, you can potentially reduce the time spent sharing posts, answering messages and arranging appointments by giving that to us making the process as easy as possible. Asking a company like us to help will also save you from creating new accounts on new services that offer online shops or market places, it’ll save you having to fill your inbox with unwanted emails from different businesses you wouldn’t usually deal with and probably won’t deal with again in the future.
First steps
If you decide to employ a company like ourselves to do the hard work for you, all you have to do is take a look at the packages we offer, ranging from 15-50 images per holiday home, the option to add a video and an option for us to visit you, take some photos and treat you to lunch or dinner!
Should you want to take the steps yourself and save a bit of the extra hard earned, follow these steps;
- Dig out those terms and conditions.
– When originally purchasing your holiday home from the holiday park, they will have issued you with document that states the terms and conditions of the park and the holiday home.
– These documents will give you all the information you need to know about your holiday home so you can advertise is eg. Year, Make Model, Size and Bedrooms. - Speak to the park about purchasing your holiday home from you.
– Most parks will pay money for your holiday home, some parks will offer a good price for your holiday home. Always get a second opinion from a trader like Luna Statics before accepting any offer from a park. - Take some really good photos of your holiday home.
– Taking good photos of your holiday home are one of the key attributes to selling. Giving people an opportunity to view the holiday home through your eyes without being at the holiday home is priceless to any buyer. Pictures can really paint a picture to what wowed you about your holiday home and could possibly wow your buyer.
– Try to take your pictures as if the photos were you, looking through your eyes, can you see the view outside the windows, afterall you do sit there and watch the sun set, or the tide come in. Can your buyers sit on the sofa without leaving their living room?
– If you have a stunning veranda/decking area or view from the living room, make sure to take a stunning photo of this as this is what will make your holiday home stand out from the rest.
– Put the toilet seat down. We see too many people taking photos leaving their toilet seat up, it’s one of those things most people notive and don’t really want to see.
– De clutter your holiday home – try to see this as if you were selling your home, the new owners need to picture themselves inside the holiday home, with their own clutter. Sometimes people just like space, too. - Make a note of anything that is out of place, damaged or could do with some TLC.
– Misselling your holiday home will only waste time for you and your buyers. Telling them everything is great when infact a wall is missing will get them to drive 3 hours to view your holiday home, but usually will not end in a hand shake at the end of the day.
If you are honest in your description, the buyer won’t have any nasty surprises when they arrive, increasing the chances of that sale.
What to look out for
A few things we would recommend looking out for when selling your holiday home privately.
- Pitch tenure
– This will give you a good indication of how long your holiday home has left to stay on-site.
– The longer your holiday home can stay on site, the better chance you are of selling at a price you are happy with. - How competitive are the parks prices on a similar specification holiday home to yours.
– It’s probably a really good idea not to try and compete with the prices the park offer as they can sweeten the deal for potential buyers, giving a better plot location on park, free site fees and also a discount on the overall price. - The park will want a commission on the total, final sale price.
– Most parks require a set commission of approximately 15% + VAT(20% of the total 15%) on the total sale price.
— Based on the above example commission, if you sell your holiday home for £10,000 the park will take £1,800 (15% – £1,500 and VAT of £300) leaving you with £8,200.
– To ensure the park receive their commission on the sale, the buyer usually has to pay the park and then the park will pay you the remaining amount.
– Some parks will want to vet potential buyers due to certain restrictions on park or simply because it’s a small park, everybody knows everybody and they would like to see if the new family/owners would be a good fit for the park. - Check your terms to see if the holiday home can be re-sold.
– Sometimes the the terms and conditions state that you are unable to re-sell your holiday home. This could be due to the age of the holiday home.
– In this case, you will need to get some off-site valuations for your holiday home from a trader like Luna Statics. Luna Statics are known for getting some of the best prices for people’s beloved holiday homes. - Parks will not allow you to transfer your site fees to the new owner.
– When selling your holiday home on-site or off-site, you may be entitled to a refund for the remaining months. If the park do refund your site fees, they may charge the new owner for the remainder of the year.
Can I have my cake and eat it?
Unfortunately, at the time of writing this article there are currently no governing bodies, authorities or ombudsman services for the holiday home industry.
This leaves a lot of buyers open to loopholes and misinformation provided when buying and selling holiday homes. We would recommend reading terms and conditions thoroughly and make sure to ask any questions before making that leap. If you are not sure what to expect, you are more than welcome to give us a call on 0800 644 5001 for free advice.
How can Luna Private Sales Help?
Depending on the package you chose, we can help with the whole process, from taking your photos to marketing it online for you.
If you are a bit of a photographer and are looking to just get help with the marketing side, we would recommend our Silver plan that would give you exactly that, with the added benefit of unlimited holiday homes, 25 photos per holiday home and a video on your page too.
We extend our help further!
Some people who are looking to sell their holiday homes don’t consider all options and that’s where we are able to excel compared to competitors.
Luna Statics our sister company buy and sell holiday homes off-site also. This allows us to quickly share the images and videos you upload to our website and give a guaranteed off-site sale price, giving you piece of mind that if the time comes when you can no longer wait for the perfect private buyer to come along, you still have an option to sell your holiday home, fast and securely.
Selling off-site can sometimes be more rewarding, depending on your situation.
If you are in a hurry to sell your holiday home and want a faster valuation that what is showing in your ‘My Account‘ area, please call them on 0800 644 5000 or email them at enquiries@lunastatics.com.
