By Roshan L. D’Silva · Holiday home Rental Basics
Somebody has to be there when you are not. That is true whether or not you ever let the house: an empty property needs airing, checking after weather, and someone to let the plumber in.
There are three arrangements, and the choice between them is less about money than most owners expect. It is mostly about who carries the obligation.
The three arrangements
A caretaker. One local person, usually part-time, who holds keys, checks the property, deals with tradespeople and handles small repairs. Best where you visit reasonably often and let rarely or not at all. Cheapest, most personal, and the arrangement most likely to create an employment relationship you did not intend.
A housekeeper. Focused on the interior: cleaning, laundry, preparing the house before arrivals. Often the same person as the caretaker in practice, which is fine, but be clear which job you are paying for — cleaning a house between guests and noticing that the roof is leaking are different skills and different hours.
A management company. A business that takes on the property: keys, cleaning, maintenance coordination, and if you let, bookings and guests. Most expensive, least personal, and the only option that carries its own insurance, its own staff and its own cover when someone is ill.
The obligation nobody plans for
This is the part that surprises owners, and it surprises them late.
In much of Europe, a person who works for you regularly in your property is an employee, not a contractor, whatever you both call the arrangement. That brings registration, social security contributions, minimum terms, holiday entitlement and rules about ending the relationship. Paying cash does not avoid it; it simply means the obligation accrues without being met, and it is the owner who carries the liability.
Our guide to hiring a caretaker in Spain and Portugal sets out how this works in two markets where a great many foreign owners get it wrong.
A management company solves this cleanly: their staff are their employees. That is a real part of what the higher fee buys, and it is worth weighing properly rather than treating the fee as pure overhead.
What to agree, in writing, before anyone starts
- Frequency. “Keeping an eye on it” is not a schedule. Weekly in season, fortnightly out of it, plus an inspection after any serious weather.
- A checklist. Water running, no leaks, no damp, alarm set, pool clear, garden cut, post collected, nothing growing where it should not be.
- A spending limit. The sum they may authorise on a repair without calling you. Set it high enough that a burst pipe is fixed on the day — a caretaker who must reach you before acting is a caretaker who cannot act.
- Who holds keys and who else has access.
- How they are paid and by whom — and never in cash without a record.
- What happens on holiday and illness. A single caretaker has no cover. Agree who steps in.
How to check without souring the relationship
Trust is necessary and it is not a control. Both can be true.
Ask for dated photographs after each visit. A short set, same angles each time, sent by message. It takes two minutes, it proves attendance, and it produces a visual record of how the property is ageing that is genuinely useful when something fails.
Keep a photo-book inventory. Photograph the contents room by room, dated, and update it annually. The archive has a piece on exactly this. It resolves disputes about breakage without anyone's word against anyone else's, and it is what your insurer will ask for after a burglary.
Visit unannounced, occasionally. Not to catch anyone out — to see the house as it is on an ordinary Tuesday rather than as it is on the day you were expected. Arrive a day early once a year. What you learn is usually reassuring, and when it is not, you have learned it cheaply.
Have a second pair of eyes. A neighbour who will mention that nobody has been for a month is worth cultivating, and worth a bottle of something at Christmas. Do not make them a spy; simply know one.
Pay properly
The last point, and the one that prevents most problems.
An underpaid caretaker with twenty properties gives yours the attention that price buys. Someone paid fairly, told clearly what is expected, and treated as a professional will tell you about the crack in the wall before it is a structural problem. That single conversation, once, repays years of the difference in fee.
Nothing here is employment-law advice, and the rules differ sharply by country. Take local advice before engaging anyone regularly.