A holiday rental in Suffolk is being listed for more than £100,000 a week as property owners are accused of seeking to profiteer from booming staycation demand.
The three-bedroom house in the village of Wenhaston is currently priced at £107,000 for seven days’ accommodation, more than three times the average UK annual salary.
The listing boasts of “wonderful views of the countryside” and a “hot tub in the garden”, adding: “Once you arrive you can relax and really enjoy yourself with a glass of wine or relax in the large garden.” Visitors with pets will have a £20 surcharge added to their bill.
The property has yet to be rented.
The home was advertised on Vrbo, an American holiday rental website, which has more than 70,000 homes listed in the UK.
Other eye-watering listings to be found on the site include a £3,000-per-week stay in a caravan in Newquay, Cornwall, and a seven-bedroom home in Sunningdale, Berkshire, priced at £33,000 for one week.
Rental firms and property owners have been criticised for looking to exploit holidaymakers forced to spend their summer in Britain by travel restrictions.
Paul Nickerson, a Conservative councillor from Beverley, East Yorkshire, was searching online for a summer break starting on August 14 for him, his wife and their three sons, who are all under the age of five. One listing, a three-bedroom house in St Ives, Cornwall, came to £10,232 per night.
Nickerson wrote on Twitter: “£71,000 to take my kids for a week away in Cornwall, a bit of a pisstake from some holiday home owners and companies this year.”
The listing, located near to where the G7 summit was held last month, has since been removed from Vrbo by the owner of the property.
Kirsty Kilmurry-Arthur, the mayor of St Ives, described the price quoted to Nickerson as “totally obscene” and “extortionate”.
She told MailOnline: “It is true that property, and in particular holiday property in St Ives, is a huge and expensive market.
“I personally believe that some of the prices are extortionate and are designed to attract a certain kind of holidaymaker, depriving many hard working people from being able to enjoy the town.”
According to research by Vrbo, prices had risen most in parts of Cornwall, where they are up 22 per cent since 2019.
In Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, they were up 12 per cent and in the coastal resort of Hunstanton, in north Norfolk, the increase was 7 per cent.
A recent study by the consumer group Which? suggested that prices had soared in ten of the UK’s most visited beach destinations this year, including St Ives, Whitby, Llandudno and Brighton, and that the price of stays in July and August was typically 35 per cent higher than last year.
A spokesman for Vrbo said: “As a two-sided marketplace, Vrbo connects holidaymakers and holiday-home hosts and as per our business model all contractual agreements are closed between the traveller and host directly.
“As all rental prices are set by the hosts themselves, Vrbo does not set, change or influence the property prices that a host chooses.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stay ... 25501114-1