Owners helpful information - Taking care of your vacation home in Orlando

No matter how diligent our cleaners are - the "eagle eyes" of any property owner will be sure to find something that they would like to have done differently or better. It's almost always some minor item that a guest wouldn't even notice - but we will try to accommodate owners wishes on these matter when raised.

However, when you are in town - save yourself some money and future cleaning fees by going through all of the closets and drawers and place paper or a liner in the bottom or on the shelves. This keeps the shelves and drawers clean and it's easy to replace each time you come in to the home.

Here in Florida, the recommendation from professional painters is to have the exterior stucco painted every 4-5 years to prevent water intrusion and damage to the walls. We recommend that you try to paint the interior over the same period, but instead of going to the expense of doing the whole property at once, you do a couple of rooms each trip, or paint all of the woodwork and trim on a single visit. This way, the home will always look fresh and maintain its appearance and attraction to returning guests.

One way to give an immediate fresh new look to a home is to buy a contrasting color to provide an "accent" wall to key rooms in the home. Painting a single family room wall or the master bedroom wall behind the bed with a strong, contrasting color will "pop" the room and make the photos look much more attractive to guests. If you do it yourself - the cost of a single gallon is typically less that $30, but you'll recover that in extra bookings.

If you don't want to spend time on your vacation painting, we understand. VillaDirect has a service available to owners to decorate rooms, paint "accent" walls and can also recommend a licensed, qualified painter for the exterior stucco.

Interestingly, carpets (and the dirt on/in them) is the number 1 complaint of guests staying in homes. The typical cream colored carpet installed by your builder was not a great choice! It made the rooms look larger and brighter when you were buying - but it's the worst color choice for a vacation rental. Added to the color, the under-pad is typically thin and the quality of the carpet itself is poor.

Carpets get dirty from guests - no matter what color they are. However, the typical carpet installed in a vacation rental when built becomes a liability for the owner after about 4 years - often leading to refunds and additional cleaning costs. After a certain amount of wear, no matter how many spot cleans, or commercial deep cleans are performed on the carpet, the stains will come back again and again if not replaced. It's no use just replacing the carpet either. The pad underneath will "wick" stains up in to the new carpet if it's not replaced.

A new carpet (of the right mix and color) will give you years more service, a fresh look and will actually reduce your costs over a 4-5 year period. If you choose the right type, new carpet will last much longer than the basic cream pad installed when you bought - but won't need to be cleaned as often provided you don't replace it with another cream carpet (you wouldn't  would you)? VillaDirect Vacation Homes has years of experience in installation and care of new carpeting, and we can advise and recommend the best type and makes of carpet for your home.

Recently more owners have been replacing family room carpet with engineered wood flooring or ceramic tile - both of which provide great wear-ability and look fabulous. We don't recommend that you put such floors in to bedrooms as guests tell us they don't like it.

Many of our most successful owners are "handy" around the home. They have a basic tool kit in their owner closet for when they are in town, and go around oiling hinges, tightening door handles and performing the hundreds of other little jobs that save them wear and tear (and potential costs for maintenance and repairs).

VillaDirect often repairs and maintains such items for owners - but "savvy" owners know that by keeping those small jobs up-to-date each time they are in town - they'll save hundreds of $'s in work order fees over a few short years.

Having a 14-inch color CRT TV in a bedroom really doesn't attract guests nowadays. Make sure that your vacation rental offers the same (or better) creature comforts as most residential homes. The typical US household now has 4 TVs - and the trend is to install flat-screen LCD HDTVs. Almost every home has a DVD player (so please throw away the VCR!).

If you haven't already - make sure that your phone provides a free local and long distance calling plan to guests (you can block international) and also make sure that you have a high speed wireless internet capability.

VillaDirect owners can save the high monthly service charge of high speed internet for their home by using the MiFi rental service, which gives guests the ability for up to 5 concurrent users to connect wirelessly at 3G high speed internet speeds in the house, the car or even at the parks. Guests and owners can rent these units directly at our Welcome Center and pre-book them before arrival.

Each home on the VillaDirect website has a new, high resolution photo shoot of every room and virtual tours of the main feature rooms taken every 18 months as standard. This makes sure that the guests are seeing the home as it is - not how it was 4 years ago.

Recent surveys show that guests are now beginning to demand walk-through video as a way of seeing the "flow" of the home and to understand how one home moves in to the next. VillaDirect now offers a video walk-through service to owners to present their home and to feature the home from the front page of the website.