Property management on the Costa del Sol when you are away

What the service covers, and where it stops

Where the free help ends and the paid service starts

What it costs

The community of owners, which is who you actually deal with

1. 01
   The minutes, every timeEverything the community decides is in the minutes of its meetings, including the works it is planning and the money it does not have. We read them as they arrive and tell you the parts that will cost you something. That is the same document your lawyer read before you bought, and it does not stop mattering afterwards.
2. 02
   The derrama, before it is a billA derrama is a one-off levy for a large repair: a new lift, a new roof, repainting the building. It is split between all the owners, it can run from hundreds to several thousand euros, and it often arrives at short notice. You want to hear about it while it is still a proposal on an agenda, which is the only point at which anything can be said about it.
3. 03
   The payments, and why they matter more hereUnpaid community fees attach to the property rather than to the person who ran them up. That is why a lawyer demands a zero-debt certificate before you buy, and it is the same reason a bounced direct debit on your own account is not a small administrative problem. We watch that they are going out.
4. 04
   The rules, when they changeParking, terraces, works, pets, noise, and whether short-term rental is allowed at all. Communities vote on these and the answer that applied when you bought is not permanent. If a vote is coming that would change what you can do with your own property, you should know before it happens.
5. 05
   Being a name the administrator can reachThe community has to be told who the new owner is, and after that somebody has to actually answer. An administrator with a Spanish phone number that gets picked up is treated differently from an owner abroad who replies in a week, and that difference is worth more than it sounds.

Keys, and renting people in from two thousand kilometres away

• You should be able to say who has a keyIt is your front door, so the answer should be a named company and a person, and you should be told when that changes. A code taped inside a box screwed to the wall outside the building is not an answer.
• The whole set, loggedFront door, garage remote, storage room, mailbox, gate fob, pool and gym codes, and the alarm code and its pairing. What we hold is written down at the start, along with what we do not hold.
• Nobody goes in on our own initiativeWork is agreed with you before it happens, other than stopping something that is actively causing damage. When it happens, one of ours is there while it happens, which is the part you are paying for.
• The cost of an access visit is small and it is agreed in advanceThe coordination and the supervision carry no hourly fee from us. When a job needs a special trip, that is agreed with you beforehand, and it is waived when the work lands on a visit that was already in the calendar.

What a check actually covers

How it starts

1. 01
   Tell us about the propertyOne call

   Where it is, how big it is, how many months a year it stands empty, whether there is a pool or a garden, and whether anything has already gone wrong. That is enough for us to say whether it is a property we can look after properly and roughly what it would cost.
2. 02
   We go and stand in itBefore the offer

   We do not price a home we have not seen. The visit is where the real scope appears: the age of the plumbing, whether the terrace drains anywhere sensible, how the building is run, and whether the community is the kind that sends four letters a year or forty.
3. 03
   The scope and the fee, in writingBefore anything starts

   What is in the monthly fee, what gets billed when it happens, how often we come, and what you receive after each visit. It runs month to month and you can end it whenever you want. If the honest answer is that you do not need this, that is the point at which we say so.
4. 04
   Keys, codes and the inventoryDay one

   The full key set is logged, the alarm is paired, the meters are read and the property is photographed as it is on the first day, so that everything afterwards is measured against something. This is also when the direct debits are checked and the community is told who to contact.

   New buildThe warranty clocks are running from handover: one year on finishes, three years on habitability including damp, water leaks and electrical faults, ten years on the structure. You also have two years from discovering a defect to make a claim, so the first management year is the one where a check is worth the most. The building’s maintenance book sets out what the property is supposed to have done to it, and we work to that.

   ResaleChange the front door lock before anything else, because you cannot know how many copies of the old key exist. This is also the moment to have the zero-debt certificate from the community on file and to confirm the utility accounts are genuinely in your name rather than still in the seller’s.
5. 05
   The schedule runsFrom that point onward

   Visits happen on the agreed rhythm, the report lands after each one, and you hear from us in between only when there is something that needs a decision. Most months there is nothing to decide, which is the outcome you are paying for.

Leaving it to look after itself, or not

A year on a home that is empty for ten months

1. 01
   January, after three days of rainThe terrace drain is blocked with leaves and sand and the water is standing about a centimetre below the door track. It takes four minutes to clear on the visit. Left alone until Easter it goes under the door and becomes a floor.
2. 02
   March, the community meetingThe minutes carry a proposal to redo the waterproofing on the roof terraces. It is a derrama, it will be split between the owners, and it is not small. You hear about it while it is still a vote with a date, not in September when the demand arrives.
3. 03
   June, under the kitchen sinkA joint is weeping. The unit is damp at the back and nothing else is wrong yet. A plumber comes, replaces the fitting, and the whole thing is done inside an hour. A month of that unnoticed is the cupboard, the floor and the neighbour’s ceiling.
4. 04
   September, the air conditioningIt is blowing warm before you arrive in October. Urgent things we simply handle without waiting for a sign-off; for the rest we get a price and you say yes by message. We let the engineer in and stay while he works. His invoice for his work, our handling free, nothing added by us.
5. 05
   December, the fileTwelve dated reports with photographs, twelve sets of meter readings, every invoice, the minutes and what came of them. Nobody thinks about that until the day they sell, and then it is the difference between a property with a history and a property with a story.

How it is paid

When you should not pay us for this

Frequently asked questions about property management

How often do you check the property?

As often as you want it checked. Weekly, every two weeks or monthly are the usual patterns, and monthly is the normal starting point for an apartment that stands empty for most of the year. The frequency is agreed in writing before we start, and it can be changed. A property that has already had a water problem, or one that is empty right through a wet winter, is worth seeing more often.

What do I actually receive after each visit?

Photographs with a written update, dated, plus anything that needs a decision from you. Not a vague invoice at the end of the month. Over a few years those reports turn into the maintenance history of the property, which matters on the day you sell it.

What happens if something breaks while I am not there?

We tell you, with photographs, and we get a price. You say yes or no. Then we let the tradesman in, stay while he works and check it again on the next visit. If something is actively causing damage, water in particular, we stop the damage first and call you second.

Do you look after a villa with a pool and a garden?

Yes, and it costs more, because there is more of it and more that can go wrong outdoors. The pool and the garden work itself is done by contractors rather than by us: we hold the relationship, let them in, check the work and deal with them when it is not right. Running a villa costs its owner far more each year than an apartment does, and most of that gap is exactly this kind of work.

Which towns do you cover?

Manilva, Casares, Estepona, Benahavís and Marbella. That is where our own team can be at the door quickly, and it is the same coverage as our rental management. We do not take properties outside it.

Can you manage a property I did not buy through you?

Yes, if it is inside those five towns. Most of the properties we look after came through us, but nothing about the service depends on that, and we would rather look after a good property somebody else sold than turn it away on principle.

What about an emergency at two in the morning?

We are on this coast rather than in a call centre, so in practice somebody who holds your key is twenty minutes away. What we do not advertise is a guaranteed 24 hour emergency line, because we are not going to promise a response time we have not built. The thing that genuinely shortens a flood at two in the morning is that a neighbour or the concierge can reach a person with a key, and after that a schedule that means the tap was checked three weeks ago.

I already rent the property out. Does that change anything?

If we run the short-term rental, management is included and there is no separate fee. If somebody else runs the renting, tell us before we start, because two companies holding keys to one front door on two different schedules needs to be agreed rather than discovered. It is workable, it just cannot be assumed.