Renting a Villa - any secret tips to finding the right one?

stooby68

We're looking to renting a villa for two to three weeks over the summer. Started looking on the internet but they seem incredibly expensive...anybody have any bright ideas where I can find a decent website to look up villas.

Looking for accommdation for 8 with pool can be near the coast but not desperate...Not overly fiussy where - France, Northern Spain, Northern Italy, Austria, Slovenia? or Croatia.

Any bright ideas?

hartcjhart

try searching for 'expat' forums in the areas you are interested

mark55man

hi although we have not done this for a couple of years, I am afraid in my experience they are very expensive. the best deal we got was going direct to french owners on french sites, but you need to be prettty confident.

we drove 8.5 hours through france to a villa we were still not 100% convinced would be there having wired 1000euros as a deposit some 2 months previous. (It all worked out fine and was lovely)

i believe that bulgaria and places like that are very cheap if you want the villa on its own for sun and swimming, but that there may not be quite as much to do

stooby68

mark88man - another good idea - don't suppose you remember the website you used?

mark55man

http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk/france/fr1591.htm - was the house

http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk/bergerac.htm - has plenty more nearby -the whole owners direct idea should give you more choice

This place was just so far away from anywhere - very beautiful - best of all the village was called lol (lol!!)

richardw

Many local tourist information websites have links to local self catering websites in local currency, the best value places are those that they haven't heard of down the travel agents. Google maps and streetview are useful.

melb

once you find a place you like google the name of the villa and the town it is in. very often the same villa is on various different websites - with different rental rates. also you stand more chance of finding out if there have been many complaints. by the way just be a cursory glance the north of spain is the most expensive area if you mean the north costa brava area and italy all seems to be very expensive for villas. the costa blanca area around javea is very reasonably priced - probably because there is such a lot of villas to choose from and javea itself is fantastic.

eslick

vrbo.com is a good one, for the US and has them across the world as well.

Make sure you haggle and definately dont take the first price they tell you.

mark55man

vrbo does have some nice properties - just spent an enjoyable 30 minutes ogling and planning

:-)