can you live on a gite income?

[paul*y]

Bonjour all,

We have just bought a house in the Haute Vienne. nr lac de vassivierre. we intend to

do up the attached barn into a gite, but are unsure whether to make one 4 bed luxury gite,

or two 2 bed gites,

Can anyone offer any advise as to which would bring in most income for the year, as the

gite will be our main source of income. (we don't know if it's possible to earn a living just running a gite?)

thanks. 

[Eslier]

You will certainly earn more from two 2-bedroom gites than one 4-bedroom gite but you should still go down the "luxury" route if you can. Whilst you will hope to let 12 weeks for each property, you need to be realistic and base your income projections upon 8 weeks (unless you have already done extensive research in your particular area and are confident of doing much better). Without a pool, you could probably get around an average of £300 per week per property for the eight weeks (in £ because the Brits will be your best customers. That means you are only looking at around £4,800 income per year. From that, you will need to deduct running costs and adverising which are likely to come to about £3,000. This leaves you with just over €2,500 profit which isn't enough to live on ! Even if you manage to let 12 weeks then this only gives you about 6,000€.

If you add a swimming pool you could increase your earnings by a further £100 per week which, at 12 weeks letting per property and taking into account the cost of running the pool, could add up to another 2,700€ to your profits.

So, at worst, you could earn a profit of 2,500€ and at best 8,700€.

Sorry this probably isn't the most positive news you were hoping for but it is realistic and I hope you find it helpful.

[Audois]

Please don't be fooled into thinking that you can live off gite income.  It's all taxable after you've written off a forfait of 37% .. you've got the taxes foncieres/habitation to pay etc on the properties.

If you are wondering if you should have a 2 bed or a 4 bed then I would suggest you do some research on the net and discover which would make your place more of a niche market for people coming to stay ... the market is currently flooded with gites and too many people unable to survive on just gites.

Bonne chance

[Val_2]

Looking at the amount of bookings or should I say lack of bookings so far and this is already July, for gîtes/b&b and local hotels in this very very popular tourist seaside resort for the present I'm afraid you have no hope of surviving on the income from gîte letting whether you have one or five units unless you provide top of the market products and spend a great deal in specialist publicity all over the world.The market for holiday rentals is not a sure thing and varies incredibly from year to year and costs don't stay still either with taxes,social charges and just the general wear and tear and day to day existing getting more and more difficult and expensive. Our local very expensive hotel which is very famous for its setting and for the owner (fashion designer) has just had a period of nearly one month without one single guest and this has never been seen before.  Here in Brittany it is already acknowledged as being an extremely bad year for tourism and I think a lot of people will think twice about trying to survive on property rentals. How do I know all this,well apart from having a daughter who has just worked for nearly two months in the main dept of tourism for area 22 and seen for herself the lack of interest this year already and here I am on the local tourist board management committee which keeps an eye on how things are going throughout the year as most locals advertise on our site and is how we make our money to keep the office going.