Handing your holiday property over to the new owner
Last time we spoke about one sweeping assumption that you need to make when selling a holiday property: that the new owners will run the place in the same as you do.
Unfortunately, that’s usually quite unlikely so the question is: how do you manage the differences?
First off, you must operate with that assumption as otherwise you’d need to close down the business since you’d not know which, if any, guest bookings you could accept. After all, the new owner may just want to live in the property themselves and not run it as holiday accommodation at all. When you’ve found a buyer that changes and life can get quite complicated.
There are basically three scenarios that you’ll be faced with:
- They’re continuing on the same basis;
- They’re continuing but on a slightly different basis; or
- The owner is closing down the business;
In the first two cases, you need to negotiate a hand-over period which needs to be at a fixed time so allow for lots of slippage as it’s sure to happen. The hand-over should take place after the new owner has paid up as “situations” can arise during the hand-over eg if they find out that they really don’t like the work involved or that they’ve made some critical assumption which just isn’t valid.
For the second two cases, it’s a little more complicated. First, you will need to change your advertising to reflect the changes or closure of the property. In particular, make sure that your availability is closed/reduced as appropriate with any systems you’re on which allow for instant confirmations. You’ll need to examine any bookings with arrival dates after you’re no longer the owner to see if they can be cancelled or if you need to find alternative accommodation for the guests.
If they are making changes to how the business will be run then you need to allow for that in the bookings that you’ll be taking for guests that will be in the property after you’re no longer the owner. If they’re adding services it’s fine obviously but if, for example, you offer airport pickups and they won’t then you’ll need to adjust your advertising well in advance and may need to change how you run the place to reflect those changes.
If they’re closing down the business then it’s simpler in some ways. The date on which you’re moving out won’t be as critical and obviously you can close down the business in advance to simplify your own move.
If you’re living in the property yourself then it’s going to be simpler to close down the property about a week before the change of ownership to give yourself time to pack and move out. If you can’t do this you should try to close down as many rooms as you can for that week.
In addition to the normal house moving actitivies you’ll also have to do something about the business itself. For example, you’ll want to close down the company, close the business bank accounts, inform the various tax and social security people, cancel the property insurance, etc. In fact, this aspect will keep you extremely busy for quite a while so it’s best not to be too optimistic about the completion date that you set for the sale, especially if you will be continuing to run the business in the run-up to the sale.
What about that hand-over period? You’ll want to keep this as short as possible of course. You’ll need anything from a day to a week depending on your property eg a self-catering property should be doable in a day whilst a B&B will usually take a few days. You’ll need to cover the basic house operation (heating system, locks, security, etc.) which you can speed up if you write an operations manual in advance. Next up is the advertising which you can document in advance though bear in mind any contracts which you have as these places may need informed in advance about the change of ownership. Finally, there’s the logistics eg how the laundry service operates, the maid service, etc.
Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the amount of work entailed in handing the property over to a new owner. Remember that you’ve both the normal moving out tasks to do but in addition both the aspects of closing down your holiday business and handing over the running to a new owner.
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