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When considering buying a holiday cottage to let or choosing an agency to manage it for you, one thing we are certain of is you will have many questions that need answering (and there may be areas you have not even considered). On this page, we hope to offer you some insightful information which will allow you to make an informed choice.

At Orange Roofs, our aim is to make the whole process as straight-forward and easy as possible. We appreciate many owners don’t actually live in Cornwall and so the disquiet of ‘who will look after my holiday home and our business’ is at the forefront of their minds. We will put your mind at ease, and make a promise to you, we will care for your second home as if it were our own. If after reading the below, you would like a chat or a visit to your holiday cottage in St Ives, please do get in touch with Sam by emailing sam@orangeroofs.co.uk and she will be very happy to help.

House Care

Others call it property maintenance but, whatever it’s called, we like to think about it as caring for your holiday home while you’re not around to do it yourselves. This ranges from general maintenance, gardening, being reactive to guest issues, ordering linen hire for guest bookings and working closely with housekeeping teams to make sure no small detail is missed. Our personal eye-for-detail during the booking process and the run up to guest holidays means each guest feels the Orange Roofs’ love from start to finish of their holiday. A lot of this is thanks purely to excellent communication between our team and the housekeeper. Read our reviews on our website as well as Google reviews and see for yourselves why others love our dedication to their homes and holidays.

If you would like to know more of how we can support you and your holiday home business, please do get in touch, we are always happy to hear what matters to you and where we can best help.

Guest Care

Happy guests are at the very top of our list of proud achievements at Orange Roofs and we are certain it is a shared aspiration with our owners too. We work hard to cover all angles and are continuously learning what matters in this business. It is an emotive business to be in yet we also have lots of processes and procedures to ‘tick off’ in order for it to be a well-oiled machine. At Orange Roofs we are mastering them both and so are very organised and efficient human beings who listen to what is important to each guest’s holiday (not robots where frequently the computer says no!)

When guests are staying, we are available to help them if they get themselves in a pickle at their chosen holiday cottage or if something lets them down whilst staying there. Our out of hours support is available 365 days a year and during office hours, we are eager to help when support is needed.

Our Orange Roofs’ App goes a very long way to giving guests self-sufficiency on holiday. It tells them the nitty-gritty such as the WiFi code, bin day, how to adjust the heating, who their housekeeper is and their contact details. What it also does is keep the key safe code locked until the designated check in time. Like we have mentioned earlier however, we are in close touch with the housekeepers on changeover days and so have the great pleasure in releasing the key safe codes earlier than the check in times if at all possible. This makes guests very happy as you may imagine!

Rates and Marketing

On the market at the moment are lots of rate manager tools that read algorithms online and tell you when to put your rates up and down. These can sometimes push rates up by 100% and drop them equally as fast. At Orange Roofs, we rely on experience and also maintaining a healthy repeat guest percentage which would get lost if one guest paid twice as much as the other for a similar period for the same house! For this reason we build trust on strong foundations and have lots of referrals from previous guests’ family, friends and colleagues. Rates are set after determining the socio-economic landscape and maintaining an awareness of influences that may affect when and if people take holidays. At Orange Roofs, we obtain a fair and reflective rate of the holiday properties we manage and aim for great guest and owner satisfaction.

We have our own website which we continuously strive to improve and nurture. Search engine optimisation is a like a skilled sport particularly when Google keeps changing the goal posts but we look to experts to keep us up to date with changes. We aim to appear in online searches when guests are looking for a holiday home in St Ives or surrounding area. As said, this is quite a science and art and so we aim to keep up! Ross is our photographer (one of his photos was chosen to feature in Conde Nast!) and works to showcase the holiday properties and reflect their true capacity to accommodate guests. We gather reviews by invite from guests that have stayed and experience the same thrill each time when we read how wonderful a holiday they have had and how impressed they are with our service.

Finally, but certainly not lastly, we have great fun with our social media on both Instagram and Facebook and use this to stay close to our followers who have all joined us organically. We add new properties, promote last minute discounts, share scenic shots and support our local community and businesses too. Why not find us on Instagram or Facebook and see for yourselves?

Owners

Our owners enjoy healthy booking numbers at their holiday homes and so this means healthy bank accounts too! When a guest books, if the holiday is more than 8 weeks away, a 33% deposit is taken from the guest to secure their dates. This deposit is sent to the owner in the remittance month that follows. The 67% is then collected 8 weeks before their arrival date and this is paid to owners in the remittance month that follows the guest departure date.

Owners can keep up to date with bookings as well as make their own booking to stay at their home using an online owner log-in. This is activated once a contract is signed and the holiday home is all set up on our booking software and website. All invoices from trades such as maintenance, housekeeping and linen can be accessed via the secure owner log-in area so owners’ accountants can also be kept happy!

Our commission is competitive yet fair so please do get in touch if you would like to know what this is. There is a fee for the initial photography in order to set the home live online and that is starts from £150 plus VAT (depends on the size of the house and number of rooms with sea views!)

What we are most proud of is how well connected we are with our owners. We work as a team and listen to their needs and wants from an agency. We don’t strictly have a one-size-fits-all approach and look to work flexibly depending on circumstances. Please do get in touch if you would like to know if we could fit your bill; we are all ears.

We have written a guide to choosing a holiday home to buy in St Ives, follow the link in the title to this page. We hope it answers any questions or concerns before you take the leap into owning your own St Ives holiday cottage. Very importantly, to understand tax rules when owning a furnished holiday let (FHL) visit the HMRC website for up to date and vital information.

Our Orange Roofs office is on Park Avenue, St Ives so please do get in touch on 01736 806100 to arrange a meeting over a proper coffee and we will be very keen to help in person.

What our owners say ...

Being “newbies” to the short-term holiday let industry, we wanted to make sure that we found an agent who best complimented and shared the same vision we had for holiday makers wanting to stay in our beautiful cottage; 45 Back Road West and a company who treasured and appreciated our pride and joy as much as we did. Sam and her team of experts have simply been tremendous. Sam suggested some minor improvements to the cottage and has projected managed all works from beginning to the end, we haven’t had to do a thing; thank you! If you are looking for a reputable, trustworthy, professional, and friendly firm to manage your property and a company who pride themselves on GENUINELY wanting the best for the holiday maker and the property owner, then look no further, you’ve already found them. I would be more than happy to share my experiences with anyone reading this and speak confidentially when I say you won’t be disappointed! We look forward to many years of working with the team at Orange Roofs.

Alison Clements, 45 Back Road West

This is our fourth year using Orange Roofs and, yet again, we’ve had a bumper year of bookings, Sam and Ross work tirelessly to match our property to suitable holidaymakers making sure our guests have a wonderful holiday. They have an excellent relationship with the housekeeping and maintenance teams keeping the house spotlessly clean and making sure any issues are sorted quickly. Being 200 miles away this kind of reassurance is invaluable to us as owners. I cannot recommend Orange Roofs highly enough. Your expertise and professionalism is second to none. Thanks guys!

Neil Whitehead, Former owner of Pencroft

We have stayed in several Orange Roofs properties over the years and found them to be of very high quality. The Orange Roofs team are extremely helpful, friendly and professional and have exacting standards which they implement in all of their properties, from the welcome information, communications and quick response to guest’s queries. As a small hands on family agency, their team and their housekeepers are handpicked for their enthusiasm, consistency and dedication to maintaining high standards. We were so impressed that when we bought our own property in St Ives we appointed them to be our agents for letting in the holiday season. As this was also our home over the winter we knew we could entrust the management to them and they would take good care of us. So we have known both sides of the company and have first hand experience as owners and guests. When problems arise, as they are bound to do from time to time, they treat both guests and owners very fairly and diplomatically and deal with difficult situations in a calm and efficient manner. I can thoroughly recommend them to both holiday guests and property owners.

Pat Wallace, 2 Harbour House

Orange Roofs is a gem of a holiday accommodation agency. We have used Ross and Sam as our letting agents since the inception of their company and have never had cause to regret it. Their lettings record for our property in St. Ives is excellent, with bookings throughout the year, not just for the high season summer months. They are utterly professional and provide a service second to none, whether it be to owners or guests. Courteous and polite, they handle any queries or requests quickly and ensure that guests are appraised of any necessary information prior to the commencement of their holiday. Ally this to an excellent housekeeping team who ensure that our apartment is in tip top shape for all new guests. On the rare occasion they encounter a blip, they can call on their experienced maintenance team to rectify the problem quickly and efficiently. All in all, Simply The Best.

Gill Daley, 6 Sunnyside

Sam and Ross and the friendly team at Orange Roofs give it 110% when it comes to being passionate about creating the best possible holiday experience for their guests, from start to finish. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them.

Bob Wallace, 2 Harbour House

SELECT ORANGE DISCOVER GOLD. I have enjoyed a working relationship with Sam and Ross, the owners of this superb holiday lettings management company [ Orange Roofs ] for several years now. They took on the management of our sea front apartment , 6 Sunnyside Flats, St Ives, some 6 years ago. I cannot speak too highly of the service that we receive from them and their colleagues . From financial management, maximised lettings, liaison with housekeeping and maintenance services, and feedback from paying guests , our experience has been supremely positive. Our own apartment has received virtual 100% 5 star reviews from visitors, both in our visitors book and on line . Orange Roofs team must receive maximum credit for this. Sam, Ross, and their working partners are always on hand to provide guidance to both us and our guests. Their local knowledge is second to none: they are always friendly and polite, and scrupulously fair . On the , fortunately extremely rare occasions, that problems occur they are always dealt with in a sensitive and balanced manner. We have invested a lot of time and expense in providing holiday accommodation at Sunnyside that is commensurate with modern expectations, and , as we use the apartment ourselves often, feels like a home from home. We are blessed that Orange Roofs sing from the same hymn sheet. We recommend them to any prospective property owner, as well, obviously, to holiday visitors.

David Daley, 6 Sunnyside

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