A buy-to-let flat, turnkey: choosing, fitting out, letting

The numerator is annual rent LESS: the community service charge, property tax, insurance, rental tax and vacancy. The denominator is the total budget: price plus transaction costs plus fit-out plus furnishing.

Vacancy is the item most often left out and the largest. One month without a tenant per year is 8% off the income. With annual turnover and two weeks to refresh, you are already at minus 4% a year before anything breaks.

Tax: private letting is taxed at a flat rate — 8.5% of revenue up to 100,000 zł a year and 12.5% above. The flat rate is charged on REVENUE, so you cannot deduct costs. That has a direct consequence: a more expensive fit-out does not reduce the tax, it reduces the yield, until it translates into higher rent.

Gross yield — annual rent over purchase price — is a marketing number. The gap between it and net is usually a third.

Between purchase and renovation: the flat stands empty and generates costs because the contractor is free in six weeks. Every such week is a service charge you already pay and a rent you do not yet collect.

Between design and works: a scope agreed verbally grows as you go. 'While we're at it, maybe…' is the most expensive sentence in the whole process, and it is never said when the scope is written down.

Between renovation and letting: a flat finished technically but with no photographs, no listing and no complete furnishing stands empty for more weeks. The photo session and the listing are prepared BEFORE the works end, not after.

Between tenants: no handover protocol and no inventory turns settling the deposit into a negotiation. At two turnovers a year that is a real cost line.

A flat from a developer is cheaper by the transfer tax but arrives with no floors, no sanitary fittings, no kitchen and no wardrobe. The road from that state to the first tenant is a separate project measured in months, not weeks.

A second-hand flat can be ready at once, but 'ready' usually means 'ready for the previous owner'. Refreshing it, replacing worn parts and bringing it up to letting standard is always some budget — smaller, but not zero.

Comparing two offers, set them against each other by the cost of bringing both to the same state, not by price. For an investor that is the only comparison that means anything.

The three stages — choosing, fitting out, letting — are usually handled by three different parties, and every joint is where something is lost: deadlines, scope, responsibility for a defect. One party running the whole thing removes those joints, because there is nobody to refer you to.

The difference shows most sharply for an investor who does not live in Warsaw, or does not live in Poland. Remote supervision of a building crew does not exist — either someone is there or nobody is.

We run buy-to-let purchases end to end: selecting the flat against a calculated yield threshold, the legal checks, the transaction, the fit-out design and supervision, the furnishing, and then the letting and management. Scope and terms are agreed against a specific budget — tell us what you are starting with and we will say what can be done with it and what cannot.

If you run it yourself, take one thing from this text: a written scope before the works and a protocol at every joint. The rest is calendar discipline.

A long let means lower income per night but predictability, less work and less wear. It is the default for an investor who does not want to run an operation.

A short let gives higher gross income and an entirely different cost profile: cleaning, linen, guest handling, seasonality, heavier wear on furnishings. It is a service business, not passive income, and it is taxed differently.

The choice is made BEFORE the fit-out, because it changes everything: the layout, the durability of materials, the furnishing, and often the choice of building — some communities restrict short lets in their rules.