I never thought owning a Tuscan Ridge villa would be so time consuming!  Renting out a property is definitely a big learning curve and something we are only just getting to grips with.  The best thing we did was buy in such a nice place such as Tuscan Ridge though.  A lot of our enquiries are repeat Tuscan Ridge fans!

Tuscan Ridge Drive, Davenport, Florida

How can you not be excited to turn up to a view like this?

Tuscan Ridge entrance – Welcome to Tuscan Ridge

February Tuscan Ridge villa rentals

We’ve had a brilliant February with our first ever rental lasting over 30 days.  We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the rental market.  March is booked at a high occupancy but we still have some availability in mid April that we are hoping to fill soon.  It’s just after Easter so we may have to ramp up the marketing to get April nice and full. Fingers crossed.

So what have we learnt so far?

Transaction fees are expensive.  Ouch.  Every company wants to charge a fortune.  So far we’ve found that the best way in the UK is something as simple as a cheque or bank transfer, or PayPal so long as it’s sourced from a bank.  PayPal avoids having to give bank details away so it can be considered a little safer.

Foreign currency payments are a little trickier.  PayPal again charges a cross border fee, and a horrible currency exchange rate if it’s not in a currency you hold in PayPal.  Thankfully we hold both USD and GBP so we can avoid some of those fees.  Most North American customers prefer PayPal so a wire fee is also avoided.

Therefore make it extremely clear how you handle payments at the point of first contact, to avoid any confusion.  Most renters are happy they’re staying at our Tuscan Ridge villa anyway, so it’s quite a pleasant market to be involved in.

Secondly, enquiries enquiries enquiries!  We’ve had hundreds, and desperately need to make some nice sounding templates up.  Some sites are worse than others – we may have to avoid the sites that allow a blanket spam of “all villas in Disney”.  I bet the innocent email enquiry gets hundreds of responses back, which would be a bit of an information overload to the unsuspecting customer.

Lastly, make sure you respond quickly.  We always aim to respond to an enquiry about Tuscan Ridge within an hour in the daytime – and sometimes even in the middle of the night!