Six-acre luxury lodge development set for a busy 2018

A husband and wife team who escaped London and set up their own luxury lodge business in North Yorkshire are looking forward to a busy 2018, after last year completing £1m of sales.

James and Sarah Gawthorpe established Cedar Retreats near Bedale in North Yorkshire in 2012. They first got the idea of holiday lettings when they moved to Thirsk and began running holidays lettings near to their home. Its success gave them the idea to purchase the six-acre West Tanfield site to start Cedar Retreats, where they applied for planning permission to build 36 one, two and three bed luxury lodges.

James said: “We chose this site because it is very accessible – near to the village and to pubs. It works really well, people can pop out to get provisions while  still enjoying a rural setting.

“A friend of ours is a timber frames house-builder and we talked to them about creating bespoke designs for lodges on the site. We dug the first sod in 2012 and welcomed our first guests in 2013. We had built five lodges altogether when the site opened.

“We have just had our busiest year, with six lodges sold. The next is the phase to complete the 10 one-bed lodges and at the rate we are going we don’t think we will be far off completing the site in three years from now. It’s really exciting to see it all taking shape.”

Sarah added that the key to success has been building in off-peak seasons to ensure that visitors always had a relaxing stay. She said another focus was ensuring both exterior and interior fixtures and fittings, including a hot tub at each lodge, were of the highest quality.

The lodges are available for investors to buy. They can then either use this as their own holiday home or they can they can use the investment to rent their lodge out to holidaymakers seeking a luxury stay in North Yorkshire. The properties are managed by a ten-strong team and occupancy is above 80%, with the company using online booking websites which yield positive reviews from both new and returning visitors.

Sarah said: “People investing in these lodges are putting their hard-earned money into to buying it, whether that be for their own use or to rent out. Therefore, we know them all quite well now and have established relationships with them; they know we are going to look after them well.

“Both James and I love the attention to detail we can put into this business.”

Return on investment is around 9.2% and many of the owners are Yorkshire business people. Prices for the renting of the lodges remains high due to the quality of the lodges and the service. The surge in popularity of UK short breaks has been advantageous also for the holiday rentals.

“There is nothing for investors to do to the lodges in terms of maintenance so when they come here, they can come and relax. For people who are running their own business, that’s a big part of the investment for them. We sell the dream here of coming and enjoying a lodge when they want to,” added James.

This year, the couple will invest in building a reception lodge for guests and they expect the rentals and sales to continue to be busy after reporting a turnover of £1.5m last year. The installation of new timber frames for the next phase of lodges is set to begin; one lodge takes around 12 weeks to complete.

Reflecting on getting the business to the stage it is now, Sarah said: “It was really tough – there were a lot of sleepless nights. We have put huge amounts of work into the business and it’s great to see it all taking shape.”

James added: “We are really excited for the future. We hope that 2018 is going to be similar to 2017; investors are getting good returns and we have great interest in people renting the lodges. We have seven or eight more lodges to sell and then the whole site will be complete. We feel we are able to give owners that something special here.”

 

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