I grew up on the east-coast of canada just outside the city of Halifax. After moving to Montreal in 2002, I craved a simpler lifestyle, fresh air, the stars, mountains, clean snow, birds, friendly people, a real fireplace and oh the list goes on and on. In 2004, I rented a chalet an hour north of the city in order to focus on my thesis…and found that I enjoyed it so much I wanted to purchase a chalet.
Problem: I had no money
Solution: Buy a chalet and rent it as a vacation rental to pay the bills. Use it when it isn’t rented.
Did it work? Amazingly yes. The chalet was so popular that it was rented all the time. In fact, it became hard to schedule myself in.
Next Problem: I had a chalet, but it was too busy that I didn’t get to use it.
Solution: By another one.
Well actually 8 more. In 2006, I stumbled across a chalet domain in Val-David (small town of 4000 residents just 80km north of Montreal) for sale. 8 sweet little swiss chalets dropped onto a beautiful mature acre of land with a swimming pool. It was love at first sight.
Now I live in Val-David (yippi! all the things Montreal was missing for me!), work from home for Softimage (my real job as a software developer), and run the chalets on my “free” time.
Over the past 4 years, I’ve learned an enormous amount about the chalet rental industry and am always amazed at the huge percentage of people who still are not taking advantage of this fantastic accommodation option.
My goals with this blog is to educate you on how to find and rent a chalet, what to expect from your rental and of course, on our wonderful chalet region – the Laurentian mountains in Quebec, Canada.
