The only real window of the year
Between June and September, any fault in a rental apartment gets dealt with in whatever fits between two arrivals: a Saturday morning, sometimes less. That is not repairing, that is holding out until October.
Right now the flat is empty and there is no arrival on Saturday. It is the one moment of the year when a shower tray can come up, an installation can be changed or a room painted without counting the hours.
What the summer has left behind
Four months of heavy use by people who do not own the place always leaves the same things: dripping taps, screens with the sealant lifting, traps that smell, locks strained by keys forced in, and blinds someone dropped too hard.
None of those cancels a booking on its own. All of them together, in July, generate three calls in a row and a three-star review.
The inventory, which is what really disappears
End of season is the time to count. Crockery, towels, bed linen, remote controls, hairdryer, coffee machine. Replacing in October costs what it costs; replacing on 30 June costs the same plus a lost afternoon.
And condition, not just quantity: a scratched pan, a sagging mattress or a toaster that no longer toasts turn up in reviews with surprising precision.
Air conditioning and hot water
These are the two appliances that generate the most incidents in season, and the two hardest to repair with a guest inside. Servicing the air conditioning as you switch it off, and the cylinder before the cold arrives, heads off the two most expensive calls of next summer.
In a rental, the cylinder works far harder than in a normal home: four showers in a row on an August afternoon test it in a way you never see the rest of the year.
Preparing an empty flat for winter
If the apartment stays closed until March, the same checklist applies as to any property: stopcock off, traps protected, fridge empty and open, ventilation thought through. A rental closed without that smells stale in March, and that is the first impression your first guest of the year gets.
If you also let in winter, the rhythm changes and what suits is a quarterly check rather than one annual turnaround.
