Making money from your holiday villa: tip 1: use a local property manager

Why bother using a local property manager? The answer is because they instill confidence in tenants and letting agents. A local manager is in charge of organising all services including cleaning, pool maintenance, gardening and so on, and also has the keys and a float so that repairs can be done quickly without the owner (who might be abroad) having to be tracked down. That is much more important than it sounds, even in this age of easy communications: people must be reassured that if the fridge breaks it will be repaired the same day, or that if the pool turns green someone can deal with it double quick. There is nothing worse for a tour operator than having an upset customer on the telephone saying ‘I told them about this 2 days ago and nobody has done anything about it yet.’