What to do.......

personally i'd let the whole house and hand over letting to an agent to fully manage. Last thing you want when your going Loco in Bangkok is a call about a leaking tap... best of luck... travel

Yeah OP, you dont wanna be bothered with that tax craic

athtrasna wrote: »

You need to be resident to be eligible to avail of the Rent a room scheme

There is a big difference between "Resident" or "Resident for tax purposes" you can live out of the country and still be resident for tax purposes - a good example is someone working on an oil rig or a ship. They live where they work but if they're in the country for more the circa 6 months they are resident for tax purposes

Forget all this talk of rent-a-room relief: If you're travelling and not working here for most of the year, then your taxable income for the year won't be large enough for tax to be a big enough issue to base the decision on.

I think the issue keeping a room for yourself is with the property management and quality of tenant you would get.

I doubt you'd find a property manager willing to take the place on, given that you might be back and moving into one of the rooms in a few months. And as others have said, without a local property manager, you may be trying to talk to plumbers and find replacement tenants from the opposite side of the world. I also think the kind of folks who would take a room in a place, knowing that the owner might be back in a few months, could be less than idea tenants in how they'd treat the place - they would tend to care just about their room rather than the whole property. And the rent they pay would be lower because of it.

My advice: bite the bullet and let it out for a year, managed by a local company who specialise in residential letting management (ie not just a general purpose estate agent whose main focus is sales). Decide that if you come home before then, you will simply move into a rent-a-room place yourself, until the tenants lease is up. If you do this, then most likely you won't be back in a few months, you will make the most of your travel experience and stay away for a decent amount of time.



Background: I own a house on the other side of the world, and I did exactly what I've advised above. I told people that I was going travelling for probably between 3 months and 2 years - so far I've been away for seven years and counting. In that time, my house has had one major leak, which then resulted in all the pipe-work needing to be replaced: that needed a LOT of co-ordination between plumber, carpenter, painter, plasterer and well as tenant liaison. Having a local person to do this was worth their weight in gold (as well as legally required in my country).