A property that hosts guests 250 nights a year does not wear like a home

FSM does not send a van with our own name on it. Maintenance runs through a vetted network of trusted local trades that we coordinate: plumbers, electricians, Gas Safe engineers, a joiner, a decorator, a locksmith. We hold the relationships, book the work, brief the job, check the result and put the invoice on your statement. A network beats an employee on availability. One in-house handyman is already at another property the morning your immersion heater fails and four guests arrive at four o'clock.

Access is the quiet half of this. Repairs stall for want of a window to let someone in, not for want of a plumber. We hold the calendar, so we know Tuesday is empty and the electrician is in and out before check-in. That is why cleaning, linen and laundry and maintenance are one operation on a managed holiday let, not two suppliers who have never spoken.

A boiler service booked into a quiet week in September costs a routine fee. The same boiler failing on 23 December costs an emergency call-out, a refund, the best-paid booking of the winter and a review that sits on your listing for a year. Preventative work is calendar work, and it is the cheap half of this job. The coast adds its own list, because salt air is patient.

• Salt and metal. Balcony hardware, external locks and hinges corrode within sight of the sea. Clean them, or replace them at 2am.
• Window seals. Blown units and perished seals let in draught and damp. On a sea-front flat, a when rather than an if.
• Damp and condensation. Guests dry towels on radiators and shut the windows. Extractors checked, vents cleared, spotting treated early.
• Gutters. Cleared before autumn. Water running down the wall instead of the pipe is the most expensive small job on this coast.
• Heating and hot water. Serviced in the shoulder season, when losing a morning costs a slow midweek night, not a peak weekend.

Safety sits on its own schedule and is tracked, not remembered. Compliance, safety and licensing covers gas, electrical and fire, with the certificates dated and filed.

Maintenance coordination sits inside the Fully Managed plan at 15% of booking revenue: the trade network, the 11pm call, the diagnosis, the quote, access between bookings, the preventative calendar and the repair history in your portal. Parts and trade invoices are yours, because they are the cost of owning a building. The fee buys you the fact that none of it lands on your desk.

The other door is different, and we will not blur it. The List on Flexiestays plan at 8% does not include maintenance. It is distribution and nothing else: your property joins the Flexiestays booking platform and its guest audience while you keep your own trades and your own standards. Plenty of owners have a plumber they trust and do not need to hire a manager. The holiday let management fees page sets out what each fee buys, and all nine services shows what sits inside the managed plan.

Whole buildings work the same way, only busier. A serviced accommodation or aparthotel operation in Dorset gets one maintenance diary across every unit, which is how a failing communal boiler is caught before it takes out eight bookings. That is operational management of the lettings business. It is not block or leasehold management, and we do not do that.