Gardien / Caretaking

[Polycarpe]

Apologies if this topic has already been covered - search brought up nothing.

Does anyone have any idea of rates for gardien work in their area - checking the property, being a contact point when there are probs,  key-holding, preparing-airing a house in advance of a visit, that sort of thing?

Any info on prices and the kind of services offered would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Rob

[Val_2]

What I would say is that you should be prepared a decent fee, as they say "you pay peanuts,you get monkeys". I did this sort of thing one summer not too long ago tohelp someone left inthe lurch and it was jolly hard work. A typical saturday changeoever took a minimum of four hours for cleaning,bit of gardening,washing covers and bathroom mats etc,plus I also had to hang around for quite a long time when people were late in arriving. The minimum wage in France is currently 8,03€/hour so be prepared to pay this. There are plenty of good registered businesses about who deal professionally with caretaking and if it were me, these are the folks I would use. Its a job which takes up a whole weekend and not many people are prepared to do this.

[Coprolite]

These 'property services' that do the turn arounds for gites. How many gites can one or two people turn around in a weekend? I imagine not much call for a Monday turnaround service...

[Polycarpe]

Thanks for the comments Val. I think you're right - you get what you pay for.

Rob

[zeb]

Rob, have a look at www.laymyhat.com

[zeb]

Rob, have a look at www.laymyhat.com

[Val_2]

Rob you need someone extremely trustworthy who won't let you down or live a long way off. The reason I got involved was that I discovered the brit caretaker of this particular property hadn't been there in weeks,he'd just left an ongoing note and the key under the mat for people to come and go and you should have seen the place. It was flooded,plaster fallen off the ceilings onto the bed,the grass hadn't been cut for weeks and the neighbours confirmed all this and there was rubbish strewn everywhere including dirty nappies half opened. I only went there with my husband to investigate a smell of sewerage in the house and whether it was a plumbing job or not. This caretaker actually lived about 20 miles away and had been paid upfront and had taken stuff from the house and replaced it with rubbish including a vacumn cleaner.We had to go out straight away and buy a new washing machine, mattress covers,pillows,bath mats and crockery to help the owners out and they then reimbursed us plus a fee for all the cleaning and gardening we did. From this experience I would never ever do it again unless it was my own property and this is the reason why the rental company pulled everyone out two weeks later and relocated them. The arrivals too with this particular rental company were sunday late afternoon arrivals from Le Harvre which out to here in west 29 takes quite a few hours and one lot didn't arrive until gone midnight due to a seaman's strike and I had been waiting since 4pm with no calls from them.