Landlords renting cottages near Moscow set strange conditions before the May holidays

At first it seemed like a crazy idea – to look for a free cottage for the May holidays two days before they start. But then we decided why not give it a try. And here’s what came out of it.

It turned out that renting a house in the Moscow region is not a problem now, if there was money. For a night for four in a house with two bedrooms, they ask for 28 thousand rubles. The house has everything you need for relaxation and a festive dinner: a stove, a refrigerator, a gazebo with a barbecue grill outside, a large dining table, and a place for a party on the lawn next to the house.

True, the first half hour, when we called the ads, were the most unfortunate. We searched on a well-known ad aggregator where they rent and sell real estate, but every time it seemed to us that a suitable option was found, the house was either already rented, or a strange, inadequate owner answered the request.

The most ridiculous conversation took place with the owner of a three-story mansion in Odintsovo, who agreed to rent it out for 2 nights for 250 thousand rubles. For some reason, bed linen was not included in this price.

Maxim, as he introduced himself, explained this nuance by the fact that he recently rented his house to a large company, after which he missed several sets of bed linen.

“Well, you charge a hefty amount for two nights, probably it can cover the cost of a pair of duvet covers?”, His girlfriend tried to reason with. But the owner of the hacienda stood his ground: either we bring our own sheets, or we sleep without them on bare mattresses.

Then there were some more murky conversations with landlords who could not decide in any way whether they were renting out their country apartments or not. For some reason, each of them asked to fill out a detailed questionnaire on the website, leave a phone number, e-mail, and even offered to make an advance, but none of them could promise to say for sure that tomorrow we can already move in.

What was the matter, it became clear after a conversation with the manager of the company, which also rents cottages in the Moscow region for weekends and holidays. The specialist, a nice girl named Marina, willingly answered all our questions and even shared some professional secrets.

“It’s just that these people are not sure that those who have already booked cottages with them will not refuse to rent at the very last moment. So they secure themselves, keep you on the hook: they ask you to leave your coordinates, make a deposit. So that if one tenant fails, then a spare one will take his place, ”Marina explained to us.

By the way, the company where she works rents out not only individual cottages, but also hotel rooms. The funny thing is that both the cottages and the hotel are located on the territory of a garden partnership.

I wonder how the neighbors in the SNT relate to the fact that the hotel business is rapidly developing near them?

“We have decent people, family vacationers, so there were no complaints about our guests,” says the manager. – In the cottages we allow to be settled even with animals. For a large company, a separate house is, of course, better, everything is prepared for this. There is a large barbecue area, a table for 12 people, a patio where you can sunbathe. But for a small family, I would advise choosing a hotel – there is an indoor pool, we also offer a buffet and animation for children. We have home-style food, very tasty.”

It turns out that firms, like the one where Marina works, now a great many have appeared in the Moscow region. Moreover, these are not large hotel chains and not real estate companies, but small, almost family-owned firms, where only one or two people work, often one family. They take control of several objects, bring them to mind, for example, they carry out repairs, if necessary, equip houses with necessary household appliances, furniture, and landscaping the site. And – voila! – an ordinary dacha near Moscow in SNT turns into a nice, cozy corner for relaxation – into a kind of resort place that can provide guests with a service no worse than the one they are used to when traveling around Europe.

A new type of tourism business – organizing country holidays on weekends and holidays at dachas near Moscow – began to develop in Russia quite recently during a pandemic, when borders were closed for travelers. It received a new impetus to development last year, when most of us, for well-known reasons, again stayed at home, then there was simply an explosive demand for dachas near Moscow, which are fully equipped with appliances, furniture, where there is a hotel service and even entertainment. People who used to go shopping in Milan for the weekend or lay low in Bruges now go to Kratovo or Nekrasovka to chill out to the singing of the nightingale.

Most of these mini-companies are actually tenants themselves: they enter into contracts with individuals (owners of cottages), take their property under management and then rent it out by the day, mainly on holidays and weekends. They say that you can make good money on this.

“Three or four years ago in the Moscow region there was a huge number of illiquid large-area mansions that no one wanted to buy. On Rublyovka and Novaya Riga, entire cottage settlements were empty, not a single object was sold in them. And then the pandemic began, self-isolation, and people were drawn out of all this horror out of the city, into nature. It was then that many of these unclaimed objects found a chance for a new life. Some of them were turned into mini-hotels, others were finished and simply rented out to receive large companies and organize parties. Gradually, a new type of hospitality business emerged, something between a country hotel and private villa rental. There are other types of countryside recreation. For example, eco-farms are well developed in the Moscow region, where you can not only live in nature, but also work in a cowshed, a cheese factory or dig in the beds. In general, many who used to spend their holidays abroad, now for various reasons cannot do this, and this is exactly what was created for them, ”commented an expert in the field of tourism business Valentin Astafiev.