Villas
What a villa rental contract must say
The photographs are the sales pitch. The contract is the house. Twelve things it has to state clearly before a deposit is paid, and what to do when it does not.
A villa week that goes wrong almost always went wrong on paper first. The pool was heated in the description and not in the contract; the staff were included in the price and not in the hours; the deposit was held by the wrong person. Here is what the paper has to say.
Who, what, when
The contract must name the owner or their legal agent, not just the agency; it must identify the house by address, not by a marketing name; and it must state arrival and departure to the hour, because a house that is not ready at four in the afternoon is a house that has failed the first day.
What is included
The word staffed means nothing until the contract says which staff, for how many hours, on which days. A typical staffed house includes a house manager and housekeeping six days a week; a chef is extra and is usually billed by the day plus the cost of food. Utilities, heating the pool, air conditioning, internet, the boat, the car and the linen change are each either included or not, and the contract must say which.
The deposit
A security deposit of ten to twenty per cent is normal. What matters is who holds it. It should sit with a licensed agent or in escrow, never with the owner directly, and it should be returned within a stated number of days after an inventory check that both parties attend. We attend it.
Cancellation
Villa cancellation terms are harder than hotels’: fifty per cent is often forfeit from ninety days out and everything from sixty. Insurance covers most of that if it is bought when the contract is signed. In high season some owners will re-let and refund; the contract should say whether they will try.
When the house is not the house
The clause that matters most is the one nobody reads: what happens if the house is not as described. A good contract gives the tenant the right to a remedy within twenty-four hours and a proportional refund if none is possible. A bad one gives the owner the right to substitute a house of similar standard, which is a phrase to strike out.
A villa is a hotel with one room, one staff and one owner. Everything the hotel’s reputation guarantees, the contract has to guarantee instead.
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