Before you start calling estate agents, here are ten questions you must ask yourself.

If you need advice to answer any of these questions, contact us (our help is freely given). Just have a pen and paper to hand! We'll do our best to help you.

1. Why am I doing this?

What's your motivation? An investment? Annual profits? Somewhere to stay yourself? The answers will help you determine what and where you should buy, the implications for property management, and tax and revenue expectations.

2. How will you pay for it?

Work out what you can afford. Are you a cash buyer, or will you need a Buy-to-Let Mortgage? Cumberland Building Society offers useful BTL Mortgages for short-term holiday properties.

Can you afford the monthly repayments? This will help you determine your budget and possible locations to search for a

Just occasionally, it will rain on your family holiday. If you’re staying in a holiday cottage, then being house-bound is better than being room-bound in a hotel on a rainy day where the only option is to venture forth for a soaking or to find a suitable indoor attraction to entertain all ages. Fun – but your wallet will lose weight.

For those choosing to book family-friendly holiday cottages and - owners, please take an inventory note - here is the list of the My Favourite Holiday Cottages Top Ten Board Games to play on holiday with your family.

We have chosen Board Games that

1. Can be easily set up (and put away).

2. Don’t need lots of fiddly bits, which, if any are lost, make the game unplayable (that’s why jigsaws, even if they were a game, would not be on our list).

3. Can be played all day or just for an hour while a shower passes by outside.

4. Allow children to compete with adults

Advertise your holiday cottage on a quality site with a reputation for being scrupulously fair to owners and bookers alike. Established in 2010, My Favourite Holiday Cottages is increasingly popular with owners who want to pay a single subscription to advertise – and don’t want their guests to pay booking fees.

With up to 40,000 visitors a month looking for a holiday cottage to book, My Favourite Holiday Cottages is fast becoming a go-to website. Over the past 15 months, the number of cottages advertised on the site has more than doubled from 700 to over 1500.

Unlike many sites, My Favourite Holiday Cottages will drive hundreds of visitors to your own website, encouraging them to enquire from there. Why? Because you will convert more enquiries from your website to bookings than from an advert. On average, a cottage advertised with us will get over 350 click-throughs to its Home or

The new holiday booking season is nearly upon us, every year it goes quiet and then, on the 27th of December, the booking season takes off with a bang. The first big event on the calendar for next year is Valentines' Day which, in 2020, falls on a Friday. It may be a few weeks away, but we can already see a significant level of interest in Valentines' breaks for couples. Let’s face it; all we need is a break in the middle of winter, and tourism has changed significantly so that many properties are now open all year round.

Enjoy Snowy Valentine Retreats at Dark Ark Cottage, Cheshire. View More Information...

Finding the perfect holiday cottage for a couple is always a daunting task, here at My Favourite Holiday Cottages, we have a collection designed just for you with over 450 cottages across the UK that are ideal for couples. Properties range from small, cosy and quaint rural retreats, perfect for a romantic escape in the countryside, to modern

Guests at Eco-Chis cottages know they can reduce their environmental footprints while luxuriating in one of two beautiful Eco-Chic Cottages in Oxfordshire. And now it’s official. ‘The Chestnuts’, a 5-star-gold award Cotswold holiday cottage, has just been awarded the prestigious ‘Rose Award’ by Visit Britain,

Hosted at Luton Hoo Hotel, the annual Visit England Rose Award provided The Chestnuts with its newest accolade: a Visit England Rose. Awarded to only 100 properties each year, this recognition from Visit England is the culmination of twelve years of work by owner Christine Burton and her team.

View The Chestnuts in the Oxfordshire Cotswold village of Burford.

Visit England’s team of inspectors nominates winners of this prestigious award. The Chestnuts, a four-bedroom, Five Star, Gold-rated holiday cottage in The Cotswolds, won the award for consistently over-delivering for customers: going above and beyond, and in the words of Visit

Many places are described as ‘unspoilt’ but rarely are. Many villages are described as ‘being in a time warp’, but the truth is usually different. BUCKS MILLS in North Devon is unspoilt, completely unspoilt.

Leaving the main road at Bucks Cross, the lane winds down the valley, through the trees and following the path of the stream, falls towards the sea. I often wonder what visitors must think when arriving late at night; no street lights, few houses and a road resembling the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. Eventually, as you round the last corner, the valley opens out, and the village reveals itself. Tiny whitewashed cottages, nestled amongst the trees, the stream still trickling beside the lane until it arrives at the bottom of the village, where it hurls itself over the cliffs and onto the beach.

Bucks Mills - A sleepy, secretive village lining a steep-sided woody valley leading to the sea in North Devon.

South West Cornwall remains a relatively unspoilt haven in the West Country, with a variety of beaches and interesting places to visit, a paradise that many tourists have never visited. The commercial centre for the area is Penzance, over 250 miles from London, and it is this geographical scale makes South West Cornwall retain the ability to offer peace and quiet in a stunning location.

Penzance is the end of the line; well, it is for the main rail network with high-speed trains terminating at Penzance. Not quite the end of the road network, the A30 that goes by Penzance and ends at Tradescantia, but this remoteness has allowed the South West of Cornwall to retain its character, traditions and natural beauty, avoiding over-development and congestion.

The beaches in the area are plentiful, clean with crystal clear waters, and generally relatively quiet even in the summer and winter, offering a fantastic spectacle, especially during the storms.

If you have visited North Devon recently, you will not have been able to miss the significant developments taking place, with substantial housing growth and tourism growth in the local area. 

One of the significant locations for the growth in tourism in North Devon has been the traditional seaside village of Westward Ho! The town takes its name from the novel of the same name by Charles Kingsley, unique in that it takes its name from a book, although the village had started to develop ten years before the book was published but was unnamed.

The village is set to the southern end of a long sandy beach, backed by a pebble ridge that protects the unspoilt grasslands of Northam Burrows Country Park. The village developed into a major holiday destination in Victorian times, primarily due to the fantastic location, sandy beach, good transport links and the novel's popularity. The village suffered, as did many Victorian seaside resorts in the 1970s and

Summer 2019 will be remembered fondly – so many warm and super-hot sunny days: Barbecues, plenty of festival-goers revelling in the warmth, abandoning the usual wellies and raincoats. While we reminisce about summer, we also look forward to those crisp autumn days. We think not of the beach but of our plans to visit inland gems like The Cotswolds.

The Cotswolds is an all-year-round destination, but as autumn rolls in and summer crowds are gone, the honey traps of Bourton-on-the Water, Broadway, Stow on the Wold and the Slaughters come into their oIt’sIt’s not just easier to pait’sit’s easier to get a table at a favoured café too. Step off the beaten track for a weekend break in a local holiday cottage in autumn to experience an authentic slice of Cotswolds living.

The southeastern corner of the Cotswolds is often overlooked but easily has enough to keep you captivated for a week, let alone a