English Non-resident property owners
If your property in Spain is empty for part of the year, the thing that actually worries you is not the plumbing. It is who walks into your house when you are three thousand kilometres away, and whether what they tell you happened is what happened.
This page is about how we handle that.
How it works when you are not here
- Access with whoever you authorise. A neighbour, the administrator, your management company, or a key left where you tell us. We do not need you to fly over.
- Photographs before and after, every time. With you not standing there, that is the only thing worth anything.
- A written report of what was found and what was done.
- A fixed price in writing before we start. If we open something up and find what could not be seen from outside, we stop, send you a photograph, and you decide.
- WhatsApp. It works across time zones and international numbers, and it leaves a written record for both of us.
- Invoice with IVA broken out, paid by bank transfer or card.
Getting the house ready before you arrive
The most requested job on the whole coast. A property that has been shut for months needs, in this order:
- Open the main stopcock slowly, with a tap open to purge the air.
- Check for a leak — the meter with everything closed tells us in half an hour whether anything ran while you were away.
- Switch on the water heater and let it come up before anyone uses hot water.
- Run every drain, including the ones nobody uses. The traps evaporate and that is what lets the drain smell in — it is the number one complaint on opening a house, and it is not a fault.
- Start the air conditioning and confirm it actually cools, not just that it starts.
- Analyse the pool water before adding anything.
Done before you land, so you arrive to a house that works instead of a list of problems on your first morning.
Closing it up when you leave
One item on this list matters more than all the others combined:
Close the main stopcock. A leak with the water on and the house empty for four months is the most expensive thing that can happen to a property. Everything else on the list is comfort; this one is money.
After that: drain or switch off the water heater, a little cooking oil down each drain to slow the traps evaporating, filters cleaned and the outdoor air conditioning unit rinsed with fresh water, the pool winterised for the real number of months, and the fridge emptied and left ajar.
The full list, including what to do on the way back in, is in our closing-up checklist.
Why an empty house costs more than an occupied one
A house does not deteriorate from being used. It deteriorates from not being used.
- A leak in an occupied house is noticed in days. In a closed house it can run for four months.
- Water heaters left hot for months with no consumption just burn electricity and corrode the anode.
- Salt air keeps working on the outdoor air conditioning unit whether or not anyone is here.
- Still pool water for six months is far harder to recover than water that kept moving.
What we will not do
- We are not a 24/7 service. Monday to Friday 8:00–18:00, Saturday 9:00–14:00. Urgent jobs inside those hours, same day.
- We will not quote a repair over the phone without seeing it. That number always changes, and always upwards.
- We will not do work you did not agree to. If the scope changes, you hear about it before it happens, not on the invoice.
Where we work
Benidorm, Altea, Calpe, La Nucía and Alfaz del Pi · Torrevieja and Orihuela Costa · the Mar Menor, Cartagena and La Manga · Mazarrón and Águilas · Mojácar and Vera. The Costa Blanca is where we are from, not somewhere we drive to.
Call +34 657 068 444 or send a WhatsApp — including from abroad. Back to the English homepage.
Tell us where the property is and how long it stands empty, and we will tell you what is actually worth doing — and what is not.