A guest who cannot park has not arrived yet. They are circling a block with a car full of luggage and a passenger getting irritable, and every minute of it is being charged to their impression of your property.
Most listings handle this with three words: "free street parking". That is a claim, and a guest circling the block at 6pm needs the four facts underneath it.
Answer four questions
Whatever your situation, the guest needs four things before they turn off the main road:
- Where exactly do I put the car?
- Am I allowed to leave it there overnight and all day tomorrow?
- What does it cost and how do I pay?
- What happens if the space is taken?
Question four is the one hosts almost never answer, and it is the one that produces the phone call.
A driveway or an allocated space
Easy, if you write it fully.
The driveway is yours for the whole stay — pull right in, there's room for two cars nose to tail. The entrance is narrow, about 2.3 metres between the gateposts, so fold your mirrors in if you're in anything large. The gate stays open; please don't close it, the latch sticks.
If you're in a van or anything over about 2 metres tall, the driveway has a low branch. Street parking on Marden Street is unrestricted and there's usually space by the postbox.
Measurements matter here. "Narrow" is not a number, and a guest in a hire car they collected two hours ago has no idea how wide it is. Go and measure your gateposts once.
A permit zone
This is where hosts get guests fined, and where the writing has to be precise.
Marden Street is permit-only, Monday to Saturday, 9am to 5pm. Outside those hours anyone can park free, including all day Sunday.
There's a visitor permit for you in the kitchen drawer, in a green plastic wallet. It has to go on the dashboard with the date scratched off — scratch off today's date before you leave the car, or it isn't valid and the wardens check this street most mornings. One permit covers one day, and there are five in the wallet, which covers your stay.
If you run out, message me and I'll get more the same day — don't risk it, the fine is £70.
Note what is doing the work: the hours, the exact location of the permit, the one action that invalidates it if skipped, the count, and the consequence. Every fine I have heard of came from a missing one of those five.
A shared garage or a barrier
The failure mode here is a guest arriving after hours to a barrier with no fob.
The garage is under the building, entrance on Lavender Row at the side — not the main entrance on Marden Street. The barrier opens with the black fob on the keyring; hold it flat against the grey reader on the post, about ten centimetres away, and it takes a second or two.
Space B14, on the second level down, numbered on the wall in yellow. Photo in the guidebook.
Ceiling height is 1.9 metres. If you're in anything taller, use the pay-and-display on Lavender Row instead — £8 for 24 hours, card only.
Height restriction, fob technique, the correct entrance, the space number, and the fallback. A garage entry with an unlit keypad and no instruction is one of the few genuine emergencies in hosting, because the guest cannot even get to the door to use the guidebook.
Street parking with no guarantee
The hardest case, and the one where honesty beats optimism.
Parking on the street is free and unrestricted, but it is genuinely competitive between about 6pm and 9am on weekdays. Most guests find something within a couple of minutes' walk.
If nothing's free on Marden Street, try Selwyn Road (first left) — it's longer and almost always has space. Beyond that, the car park on Wilbury Road is £6 overnight and three minutes' walk.
Avoid the marked bays outside numbers 20 to 28 — they're residents-only despite looking identical to the rest.
"Genuinely competitive" is the phrase that saves you. A guest who was warned and then found a space is pleased. A guest who was promised free parking and spent twenty minutes looking writes about it.
Two photos, from the car
Take these from the driver's seat, or from where a driver would stand:
- The approach, showing the turn they need to make, with the landmark named in your text visible in frame
- The space itself, with the number or marking readable
Wide shots. Guests match scenes, and a close-up of a bay number is unrecognisable from a moving car.
Electric vehicles
Increasingly the second question after the space. Say plainly whether there is a charger, whether they may use a domestic socket, and where the nearest public charger is with its network name. "There's no charger here; the nearest rapid is a Gridserve at the Tesco on Old Shoreham Road, about four minutes' drive" is a complete answer and takes ten seconds to write.
The one-line version
If you write nothing else, write this and fill in your own details:
Where: the exact spot. When: the restricted hours. Cost: the number and how to pay. If it's full: the named fallback street or car park.
Four facts. Almost nobody writes all four, and the hour after arrival is completely different for guests who get them.