Mick Jagger’s villa or Bruce Willis’s bolt hole? The rich and famous rent out their overseas property and make a fortune.

The attractions of having a holiday home abroad have palled somewhat recently. As belts — whether Hennes or Hermès — are tightened, growing numbers of owners are looking for ways to make overseas investments pay their own way. That goes for the rich and famous, too, increasing numbers of whom have been looking to raise extra cash by letting out their second (or should that be third, fourth or fifth?) homes for thousands of pounds a week.

Take Sir Anthony and Lady Bamford, the construction billionaire and eco-business entrepreneurs, who are worth an estimated £950m, according to The Sunday Times Rich List. Despite their wealth and connections, the couple — friends of Prince Charles — decided to open up their home on Barbados to strangers earlier this summer — albeit only well-heeled ones.

Their sprawling, four-bedroom Pink Cottage, built in rose coral stone and set in five lush acres by the Caribbean, is available to rent from £9,000 a week. With beige furnishings, linen-draped four-posters and ensuite bathrooms, the villa has all the jet-set mod cons: an Olympic-sized pool, a private tennis court and a tropical garden for alfresco entertainment, as well as the services of a butler, cook and maid (islandhideaways.com).

“Famous people all over the world rent out their second, third and fourth homes, just as non-famous people would,” says Wolf Worster, who founded Pure LA Villas (purelavillas.com), a Los Angeles-based firm with a portfolio of ultra-luxurious homes that let out for $50,000 a month and upwards. “Thirty thousand dollars a week won’t make them substantially richer, but wealthy people are smart with their money. They see vacation rentals as a way to support the high maintenance costs that come with owning these impressive homes.”

Indeed, the need to boost cash flow in these difficult times has led to a boom in short lets at the top end of the rental market. “In America and the Caribbean, there are more high-end homes available for short-term rent than ever before,” Worster says. “It indicates that these homeowners increasingly need extra income.”

For many such owners, discretion remains the key. Worster reckons that more than half of the “high net worth” individuals and celebrities who rent out their holiday villas through his agency do so anonymously, “so you never know whose bed you might be sleeping on”.

Others, however, are happy to use the cachet a famous name adds to promote their handsomely priced lets. For properties developed with the holiday dollar in mind — such as Richard Branson’s Necker, in the British Virgin Islands (yours from about £8,000 a week; neckerisland.com), or the Bruce Willis Residence, an airy five-bedroom pad in Parrot Cay, in the Turks and Caicos (designed by the London architects United Designers, with a price tag of £6,000 for seven nights; parrotcay.como.bz) — the lustre of celebrity is just an added extra on the tick list of high-speed WiFi and Egyptian cotton sheets.

Take Mick Jagger’s Villa Mustique — a Japanese-style six-bedroom oceanfront property with a koi pond and pavilions. Since it leaked in 2002 that he was letting it out, his agents have made the most of the celebrity connection. The property, which is available for £10,000 a week, is now advertised on luxury rental sites under the Rolling Stone’s name. Not that just anyone will be allowed to nose around his drawers. “Clients must apply for the right to rent his property,” says Alfredo Merat, founder of Overseas Connection (villasoftheworld.com), which co-lists the Mustique retreat.

Another 20th-century music legend to have set his sights on the short-let market is Sir George Martin, the Beatles’ producer. His “cosy” six-bedroom hideaway, Olveston House, in Montserrat, with a tennis court and a swimming pool, has played host to big names, from Paul McCartney and Sting to Stevie Wonder and Elton John, all of whom stayed with Martin while recording at his nearby Air Studios. Eager to maximise his rental income, Martin has since effectively turned the property into a guesthouse, letting out rooms at very unstarry £50 a night (olvestonhouse.com). He also has an on-site restaurant that serves British favourites such as Sunday roasts.

Among those who put more of a premium on discretion are Pierce Brosnan, the former James Bond, most recently seen in the Mamma Mia!movie. The specifications of his villa — not on Skopelos, the Greek island where the musical was shot, but on the north shore of the palm-fronded Hawaiian island of Kauai — are released only to those “making a serious rental approach” to Trinity Properties (trinityproperties.com), a local holiday-rentals company.

It is possible, however, to get a sense of what Brosnan’s sunshine bolt hole might be like from the fact that properties in the area cost between $10m and $26m to buy — and from the fact that those advertised as holiday lets on the Trinity Properties site have an average of six bedrooms and rent for $8,000 or so a week. Brosnan’s neighbours on the “star strip” of Anini beach include Ben Stiller and Sylvester Stallone, who has his own polo field next to the beach.

Lucy Russell, the managing director of Quintessentially Estates (quintessentiallyestates.com) — search agents who specialise in finding luxury holiday homes — says that many of her clients want to know, before committing on a purchase, how easy it will be to let out. “They may visit their properties for only one or two weeks a year, so rental schemes offer an attractive income,” she says. “They’re often drawn by development/hotel schemes that have five-star service and facilities on tap, with the privacy and discretion of a gated property, the added benefit being that you can let the property back through the hotel’s management program and have very little to do with maintenance and upkeep.”

Other resorts competing for top-end investors include Amanyara, in the Turks and Caicos (amanresorts.com), the Sanctuary at Parrot Cay (parrotcay.como.bz), where Willis’s neighbours include Donna Karan, and Anahita, on Mauritius (anahitamauritius.com), managed by the Four Seasons hotel chain.

Sports stars have also latched on to the potential income offered by their lavish holiday homes. Owners at the Royal Westmoreland Golf and Country Club, Barbados (royalwestmoreland.com), include the former footballer and Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker, who has a £2.5m villa, the tennis ace Andy Murray and the cricketers Andrew Flintoff and Marcus Trescothick.

With their sights on the Christmas rental market, a select group of owners, including the England footballer Wayne Rooney and the former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan, recently clubbed together to offer their properties on the resort as the Platinum Collection. Rooney’s seven-bedroom villa on Ocean Drive is the most luxurious, with views across the aquamarine swimming pool to the ocean, a cinema, a spa bath and a gym designed by Wayne himself. The cost?

A cool £1,300 to £3,000 a night.

Sally Howard

Source: Property, Times Online – UK