Did you chose to work with a property management company? Then this checklist is made for you. You will find a list of different steps you can follow to check if your management company is doing a great job or if they put your tourist licence at risk.

8 essentials things that your property management company in Barcelona should be doing!

• Proceeding with the tourist tax. This tax has to be collected for each guest over 17, for the first 7 nights of their stay. Then twice a year, the collected tax needs to be payed to Catalan Government. To make sure that your management company handles the matter properly, you should ask them the tourist tax declaration that proves that it has been paid.

• Passport details. It is compulsory for anyone offering hotelier-like services in Catalunya to collect all the guest’s passport information on the day of their arrival and to send them to the Mossos d’Esquadra before midnight. Just like for the Tourist Tax, we strongly recommend owners to ask for police report receipt to make sure that it is done.

• Do they have a 24/7 emergency number as required? They should also have the ability to intervene in less than 30 minutes in any of the apartment managed if the guests are not respecting the quiet hours and disturbing the neighbors. It is then simple to test by calling after the office hours to make sure that someone answers the phone all the time.

Failing to abide by those three points can result in the loss of the touristic license for apartments in Barcelona. Making sure that your management company respect these laws is thus only the first step in making sure that your apartment is in good hand. To assess the quality of the service provided, we also recommend to check these points:

•  Are they using a noise meter? When technology comes to help reduce the negative effects of tourism on Barcelona, it would be sad not to embrace it. Noise meters allows to keep an eye on the noise guests are making in order to prevent it before it becomes a problem for the neighbors. You could even ask for features that allow access to real time data of the noise meter connected in your apartment.

• Ask the neighbors if they know them. We know that the neighbors are often one of the major issue to deal with when owning a touristic apartment in Barcelona. From experience, we have seen that if the management company presents itself, explain its activity, listens to the concerns and act on them, then the neighbors are less likely to appear as hostile to the tourism activity in their building.

• Check the reviews your apartment is getting on the platform used. Guests will provide great insights on the service that is offered to them and how the apartment is maintained. The ratings, comments and frequency of the comments will give you clue if you should be happy of their service.

• Test how efficient the maintenance team is. You can do that by asking for new features to be installed in the apartment and see how long it takes. Of course, you want the maintenance response time to be as low as possible to minimize guests’ disturbance if anything happens during their stay. To test the maintenance standards implemented by the MC, we recommend to spend a night in the apartment at least once a year.

Going the extra mile:

If your Management Company can tick all of the above boxes, then, it seems like they are doing a good job. But are they doing a great job? The points below are non-essential but they will make your life, and the life of your apartment easier.

• Can they propose devices to you which reduce power consumption?
• Do they have someone solely in charge of checking the state of the apartment on top of check-out verifications?
• Do you have real time access to the data of your apartment?
• Did you have the chance to get a personalized contract?
• Are you sure that they are offering you the best possible rent?