Renting out your home in Karjat

Our advice for Karjat

Karjat is a two-hour drive from Mumbai and about the same from Pune, which makes it one of the few places where a house can fill on a Friday night and empty on a Sunday evening, week after week. Owners here are selling a weekend, not a holiday.

What the weekend crowd looks for

Groups of ten to twenty arrive for birthdays, office offsites and family reunions. They ask about the pool first, then about who cooks, then about whether the music can stay on late. Decide early which of those you are willing to host: a party villa and a family farmhouse need different rules, different deposits and different neighbours.

Building for river country

• The Ulhas river and the hills bring heavy rain from June to September; plan drainage, damp-proofing and a generator before the first booking.
• Water supply is often a borewell or a tanker. Confirm the source and the cost per tanker, because a full house uses far more than a family home.
• Keep a caretaker couple on the property. Weekend turnarounds of twelve hours are impossible to run from the city.

Paperwork worth settling first

Most of these houses sit on land outside municipal limits, so the gram panchayat, the land use recorded in the 7/12 extract and any non-agricultural conversion all matter. Commercial letting can also bring the Maharashtra Bed and Breakfast scheme and the Shops and Establishments Act into play. We suggest asking the panchayat and a local lawyer in writing what your house needs, before you advertise it.

Deposits and damage

Large groups break things. A written deposit, an inventory photographed at handover and a named person who checks the house before departure turn arguments into paperwork.

Our view: Karjat rewards owners who accept that they are running a small hospitality business two days a week, with all the wear that implies.