Property manager for apartment rental?

Check our Davide Mengoli of Salento With Love. His business is honest and very helpful. We worked with him as our agent to purchase a townhouse in Southern Italy. Depending on where you live, if he can't cover you, he likely will know someone honest who can. He speaks English as well. He offers a lot of free You Tube videos about buying properties in Italy. I highly recommend him.

Hello!   Would you be willing to connect with me to discuss your recommendation of Davide Mengoli. We are Canadians considering using his services. Joëlle

Absolutely. We consider ourselves fortunate to have found Davide. He is an Italian who grew up in Salento where his parents and sister still live.  He lived in London for 20+ years and was a successful international art dealer. He retired early at 45 yrs old. After 5 years, he was bored to death. He is a very high-energy person whose passion is history and architecture of Italy. He decided to start up a real estate business. He is the broker and agent for his new Salento With Love business.

There is no way we could have been so successful in buying the townhouse of our dreams if it weren't for his help as we don't speak the language.  He went way out of his way to help and explained step by step what is necessary to meet the laws of Italy that can be quite confusing. He saved us a considerable amount of fees with his suggestions (even avoiding horrendous exchange rates by banks) which saved us at least $8.000. I believe he plans to expand in the next few years to more than the Southern (Salento) region, but he is extremely knowledgeable. My suggestion is to get on You-Tube and type in Davide Mengoli Salento with Love videos. He steps you through several videos about what you will need to accomplish. He made it a breeze for us. He is passionate about Italy and his work. He also offers rental service. For instance, the house we bought can be rented out during the peak tourist season as it's very close to a beautiful popular beach. His service charges about 400Euros a year for a number of services. The posting of your place, making reservations, collecting the deposits, cleaning between clients and a check up on your property once a month. They will  do emergency repairs and offer a 24/7 concierge service for renters who have needs. They will take 20% of the income made off your property on top of the 400 euros annual charge. We think this is very fair considering we would be unable to take care of all of this since we live in the U.S. 6 months of the year. We will be staying in our townhouse for 3 months, go home to the U.S. for 3 months and return to Italy for 3 months for a total of 6 months in each place (since we aren't residents or citizens of Italy).

I think his videos will explain everything. You should do enough research and make a list of all the things you MUST have and other things you can do without before you start looking! For us the priority was the weather in winter, no hills or many stone steps to climb (everything with a view is high on hills and you'll need a car. You must take the driver's license within one year of living there as an international driver's license is only good for one year and it the test is only in Italian . We didn't want to have to maintain a pool or acreage. We wanted to be able to live in the old historic town and be able to walk out our door to a cafe or restaurant. We did make one mistake...the closest train station is 4 miles away, but everything else we got made it worth that omission. You need to decide if you want to be isolated in the countryside or be close to town.

Davide has acted as our power of attorney to get documents filed for us etc... His fee as an agent is very, very reasonable (half of what most charge and what we thought we'd have to pay). We heard nightmares about mistakes/omissions agents have made dealing with transactions for foreigners. The government is very strict about remodels on historical buildings and keep close tract of these sales and charge exorbitant fines for missing permits for remodels.

We signed the papers and will close in late August (most convenient for us to get to Italy). We bought our place sight-unseen, but Davide was diligent in videotaping every little aspect of our place so we knew exactly what it looked like and everything that was done during the restoration. All new wiring, plumbing, new solid oak floors heated under them, 4 new air conditioners, and best of all, fully furnished with beautiful antique furniture and everything left in the kitchen like new fridge, brand new oven and rooftop furniture!  Saved us lots of time and energy trying to find all this stuff we need to live there.  We got a little piece of heaven for sure; just the house we wanted and needed for our lifestyle and age (we are retired).

Tell Davide we recommended him if you contact him. Remember that he deals with the Southern area of Italy but if you go North, he might be able to recommend someone honest to help you if he can't. We chose the heel of Italy for the warmth in the winter months (Tuscany and other areas North have cold weather and even snow in their mountains). Our town Ugento is small and not a tourist stop. It is however, loaded in July and August with Italians on the beaches so good rental possibilities during the hottest months when we don't want to be there. His email address is Davide@Salentowithlove
Just say Louann and Paul from the U.S. recommended him. He will take good care of you. You will save a lot of work for yourselves if you watch his videos first. Good luck!