Turning Your Home Into A Guest House for 2010

This information in this article is courtesy of The Property Magazine (Things to consider before turning your home into a guesthouse for 2010).

The 2010 Soccer World Cup is coming to South Africa and a lot of us are considering renting out rooms in our homes for an extra buck or two. This is a unique once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which was prompted by the decision by Internationale de Football Association’s (FIFA) first-time decision to allow non-hotel accommodation facilities to be made available during the tournament.

There are, however a number of things to consider before you start prepping rooms in your house for eager soccer fans:

Be very mindful of insurance implications as properties are insured as private dwellings. The moment a property is converted into a guesthouse, the class of insurance changes from private to business. This means that standard household and homeowner cover is invalidated. In layman’s terms this would imply that, should a guest’s possessions be stolen or if the room should be burn to the ground, you as the homeowner would be responsible for the damages. You would even be responsible for medical cost should a guest fall in the shower or hurt him/herself in any way.

Changing your insurance from private to business is all but an easy task. A business needs to be registered before you can get insurance cover and this means separate bank accounts, registration with SARS for income tax etc.

Another point to consider is that MATCH Event Services – an events company hired by FIFA to secure a minimum of 55 000 rooms for 20101 in both the hotel and non-hotel industries - stipulates that facilities need to be officially graded in order to be contracted as accredited service providers. If you want to be contracted, the rooms in your house need to be available for the entire duration of the tournament, without any form of a guarantee in terms of secured guests and listing an ad would come out of your own pocket.

Don’t be over eager - make sure you weigh all options and cost before you make the decision to convert your property into a guesthouse.

For more information visit http://www.match-ag.com/accommodation.html

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