November 2014 The first return
trip…We had already booked our return flights in August before we completed the
sale, now we invited my father and booked a flight for him to join us. But he
had a new girlfriend he was clearly smitten with. So like parents taking a
teenager’s friend on holiday so they will be entertained, we decided we would
invite Dad’s new friend Wendy who we had not yet met. We collected them on the
way to the airport and met Wendy for the first time. Fortunately she was lovely
and a pleasure to have along and best of all she kept my dad company.
It was nearly 11pm when we arrived
at the house tired and hungry, having stopped at a services hoping for hot food
but finding only pastries on offer. During the drive my anxiety about the house
having been left untended for ten weeks had grown but pulling up at the gate,
it looked exactly as we had left it. We opened the door and went inside. It
looked as it had when we left but the open windows had left it feeling chilly
and damp and smelling ever so slightly musty. Gerard and I made coffee and
found some snacks for our guests then went to make beds up for them and explore
room by room. Thankfully all was well and my worries of the last ten weeks were
unfounded.
By daylight the next morning, we
could see that the humidity had taken a toll and everywhere that human bodies
had touched had grown a faint fuzz of mildew. This included door and cupboard handles,
light switches and the backs and arms of chairs. Fortunately a wipe with a damp
cloth or brushing down with a clothes brush got rid of the problem but it
demonstrated why it was not good for the house to be left closed for any length
of time.
Outside the garden, which had been
parched in September, was sprouting all manner of weeds up through the brita
which is not laid on a semi-permeable membrane. Without irrigation the only big
plants doing well were aloes and cacti but little green shoots were everywhere.
Over our stay I had a go at weeding but it is such a big area that with photos
due to be taken, I needed to ask Andrew, the pool man, to arrange for some
weeding to be done to get the garden photo ready. How to best manage the garden
has remained an ongoing issue. The weeds make the outside space look unsightly
for guests and grow all the time apart from the height of summer when it is too
dry and hot. They have continued to sneak up on us and for the last year we
have agreed with Andrew that his team will keep on top of them. I supplement
this by always doing some weeding when I am here. I am looking forward to being
able to landscape one day but this will be expensive and needs some real thought
put into planning it and computer controlled irrigation systems are also
expensive to install and run.
We had a list of tasks we had to
achieve during our stay and chief amongst them was setting property management
in place. We had met Karen and Rob in September but it felt unsatisfactory to
settle on them without seeing what other options we had so we had set up some
interviews with other businesses. Although there are plenty of options on the
south coast, the Vale da Telha is quite short on well-established property
management businesses that can be found in the internet from the UK. Our house rental this had to succeed for us
and that meant it had to be sustainable ie with a licence, tax affairs in order
and reliable property management which would establish and maintain a good
reputation. The other people that came to see us that week offered plenty of positives
but we thought long and hard and decided on the winning duo of Karen and Rob
who we had met in September. As a result we contracted both of them and remain
more than happy with their service two years later.
One big factor was trust as we felt
we could trust both of them. Don’t underestimate the importance of trust in
this relationship as there are so many ways that you can be ripped off. If you
don’t trust them at the beginning the business relationship will soon start to
flounder under suspicions. While I stress that we trust the people that stand
between ourselves and our house, this is not an unconditional trust and I do
keep an eye and ask questions. Apart from anything else, I want them to know I
am not giving them free rein and that I expect accountability and transparency
from them. I would also say here that the trust is a two-way street and as they
have got to know us they have been able to see that we are trustworthy people
who take seriously our obligations in terms of keeping our house at a high
standard. And their reputations also stand or fall on the quality of the houses
they manage. Deciding who would look after the house was a big weight off our
minds as it meant that there would now be people locally keeping an eye on the
house.
Karen came to see us to discuss how
we would market the house. We agreed that we would plan to have the house ready
for Easter which was at the beginning of April and this would require ‘Start of
Business’ paperwork to be registered for then. She suggested rental prices from
Peak (1250 euro) down to Winter Season (450 euros) which we were happy to go
along with recognising her superior local knowledge. We also discussed the
set-up of the house in terms of bedrooms and the requirements of the tourist
licence. We had the potential for four bedrooms but at this point we really
only had two viable bedrooms. We decided that what we needed to do was to
create a corridor down the side of the twin bedroom to access the furthest en suite
bedroom and also create a wall with a door in it to block off the kitchenette
that formed one corner of the en suite bedroom (which had been a sitting room).
On plans this kitchenette area was shown as a storage space and we would take
it back to a storage space for linen/towels and cleaning materials which could then
be locked for the cleaners. Karen said she would speak to a builder she uses
and come back to us with a quote.
Meanwhile she would proceed with
meeting the criteria for the tourist licence. One of the criteria was that the
gas tank had to be checked and Andrew our pool and garden guy had had to clear
a shrub which had grown too big beside it as its roots could grow into the
pipework. This was no loss as it was leaching horrible black sticky sap onto
the tiles and windows on that corner of the house. This was just one of many
tasks she had to oversee. We were starting to realise that our garden had
beneath it a maze of pipes and tanks which needed to be considered in any and
landscaping and planting schemes we came up with. Many plants, evolved to
survive in these hot, dry conditions, have tenacious root systems designed to
force their way down through gaps in rocks and make the most of small amounts
of water so, gardener, beware!