Looking after your second home when you are not there
Not everyone letting a place in Cornwall wants to run a holiday let. If your second home is mostly for you, we can hold the keys, keep an eye on it, and be the local pair of hands that saves you a 250 mile drive.
Who this is for
Owners who use the place themselves, let it a handful of weeks a year, or do not let it at all. You do not need changeovers every Friday and a listing to manage. You need someone nearby who notices the things that get expensive if nobody notices them.
We know this one personally. For years we ran our own Cornwall properties from the Midlands and learned exactly how hard it is to look after a house from 250 miles away. Everything below is what we wished we had had.
If you are letting properly and want the whole operation handled, our holiday home management service is the page you want instead.
What we do
Keyholding and access
We hold a set of keys and let people in: the boiler engineer, the window fitter, a delivery that needs signing for. You stop scheduling your life around a two-hour appointment window three hundred miles away.
Regular checks
How often is up to you, from weekly through the winter to monthly in quieter months. On a visit we look at the things that turn into money if they are left: damp and condensation, signs of a leak, whether the heating and frost protection are actually working, the state of the roof and gutters from the ground, post piling up behind the door, the garden getting away from you, and anything that suggests the place has had unwanted attention. You get told what we found, not a tick sheet.
Managing tradespeople
Getting quotes, being there to let them in, and checking the work before you pay for it. Sean is a qualified electrical and mechanical engineer with years of property development behind him, which is the honest reason we can tell a fair quote from an optimistic one.
Opening up and closing down
Heating on and the house aired before you arrive, beds made if you want them made, milk in the fridge. Then shut down properly after you leave. Through the winter that means draining down where it is needed and making sure frost protection is on, which is the single most common thing that goes wrong in an empty Cornish house in January.
Meet and greet
For friends and family borrowing the place. Someone lets them in, shows them how the heating works, and is at the end of the phone.
When the weather turns
We are in St Austell. When a storm is forecast we can get to most of St Austell Bay inside twenty minutes, before and after.
What it costs
The same answer as everywhere else on this site: there is no rate card, because a two-bedroom cottage in Charlestown and a family house up a lane near Fowey are not the same job. Tell us where it is, how often you would like us there and what you want us doing, and we will give you a clear number.
You only pay for what you use, and all clients get unlimited call-outs during office hours. We will not charge you to change a lightbulb.
Questions we get asked
Through the winter we would suggest fortnightly at least, and weekly if the property is old, exposed or has had damp problems before. Most of what goes wrong in an empty house is slow: a small leak, a failed heating timer, condensation building up in a closed room. Catching it in a fortnight rather than in April is the whole point. In summer, monthly is usually plenty unless the garden needs more.
We ring you, tell you what we have found and what we think it needs, and agree what to do. For anything urgent, we would rather make the place safe first and talk about it immediately afterwards, and we will always be clear about which of those we did. You are never going to get a bill for work you did not know about.
Yes. Keys are held securely and labelled by code rather than by address, so a lost keyring is not a map to your house. We can also fit and manage a key safe at the property if you would rather have one there for trades and family.
Easily, and a lot of our owners are exactly this. A few weeks of family and friends in the summer, the odd paid booking, and the rest of the year empty. We can do changeovers and linen for the weeks that need it and go back to checks and keyholding for the rest. It does not have to be one thing or the other.
Where we work
Across Cornwall, with St Austell Bay as home. We know Charlestown, Fowey and Mevagissey street by street, and each of those pages is honest about what is awkward there. If you are not sure whether we reach you, just ask. If we cannot look after your property properly, we will say so.