By Alexander Garrett
When Sue Childs bought her apartment Il Mulino, near Pierantonio in Umbria, Italy, letting it out was initially not among her objectives. But two years on, she is booked up for most of the summer with paying guests, and is looking to market the property even more strongly, with its own website.
The purchase came about after Sue, who is a teacher based in Surrey, was invited to a wedding in Umbria. "Some very good friends of mine from Reigate moved to Italy and were married in Perugia," she says. "When I went over I saw how lovely the area was."
Sue was invited back at Christmas for a shopping trip, and her friend showed her a small abandoned hamlet that they were planning to develop for holiday homes. "I saw it on a grey, cold day; there were trees growing through the roofs of some of the houses, and they were strewn with rubble and ivy, but I fell in love with it straight away," says Sue.
The plan was to develop the small group of buildings, abandoned some 50 years earlier, into seven holiday homes complete with a shared tennis court and swimming pool. Her imagination fired, she decided to buy and chose an apartment inside the old olive press – the original mill stone was still intact – in the bottom half of what was a large barn-like building.
"I thought it would be wonderful to be able to use it myself, but also for my three grown up children," she explains. "But I also saw that it offered really good investment potential, particularly as I would be buying it off-plan." The apartment cost around £250,000 by the time it was finished.
When the building was completed, Sue was thrilled with the result and furnished her apartment exactly to her own taste with an eclectic mix of contemporary and antique pieces and materials.
At first, Sue offered the apartment to friends and family to stay for just a token payment. "I said use it, and then give me your feedback. I wanted to know that it was equipped properly and was looking out for things I might have missed," she says. "But I also loved the fact that people were using it and that it was not standing empty."
Sue subsequently decided to let out the apartment for payment, figuring that it would at the very least help her to cover the bills associated with the property. She used Google to look for other properties in the area and found out that the estate agent Cluttons had an office in Italy.
"He came to check everything – all the appliances, the electrics and so on, and to see that all the guarantees were in place. He wanted to see that it came up to the right standard," says Sue. Fortunately, the development where Sue's apartment is situated has a property management company looking after maintenance, housekeeping and all the other responsibilities needed to keep the property up to scratch. "They do the gardens, the pool, the cleaning and the laundry – without them it would be a different ball game," says Sue.
Last year the property was let for the first time, and Sue admits she had some trepidation about allowing strangers to use her apartment, but so far she has had no problems. "I find some of the guests myself, and I have been quite choosy, but I also felt that if they came through Cluttons they would be like-minded people. People do write in the visitors' book and it has been delightful to find that they've had a wonderful holiday there."
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Alexander Garrett is a freelance property writer who contributes regularly to The Observer and British Airways' Business Life.
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