How does a Canadian find a holiday rental in the Algarve? It’s a process fraught with fraudsters, fake imagery, false landlords, just an absolute potential horror story in the offing that could destroy a visit to this glorious part of the world.
How did we find our Albufeira holiday home?
As a Canadian visiting the Algarve in January through March for the first time we were quite concerned about availability of rentals. All sorts of stories related how one would have to hurry up and grab the first rental available as the “supply” would quickly run out.
Having been here for more than six weeks, and spending much of our time looking into the reality of the holiday rental business here in the Algarve, already planning for our stay next year, we’ve learned there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of rentals available from Cabo St Vincent in the west to Vila Real de Santo António in the east in the Algarve.
So how do you find the right rental for you?
Talk to your personal network, maybe some former Algarve renters.
What I mean by this is talk to people you know. You might be surprised about how many Canucks have already visited the Algarve or know someone who has and … they love to talk about their visit here.
Ask how did they find their rental, who did they book through, was it an all inclusive visit with air travel included or did they book it all themselves?
Algarve facebook groups.
There are dozens of FB groups. Some focus on the Algarve in general, some zero in on specific locations in the Algarve.
The problem we found about relying on renting through a FB group is we had no idea to whom we were conferring via FB. Is it a real person, do they really own the place they are offering, what happens if you send them money and they just disappear?
Long before our trip we had booked a place in Albufeira, asked the owner for proof of ownership which they provided, then one day, they just disappeared, ghosted us, wouldn’t respond to messages. We had no indication about what had gone off the rails.
So do be very careful about booking through a FB group with someone offering a property for rent, a person about whom you know absolutely nothing.
Airbnb, VRBO
For our first trip to the Algarve with no idea what was what, we decided that we would use one of the rental agencies. Why? Because if the rental property are listed on those sites, one presumes that they actually do some vetting to be sure that the person listing a property is actually able to list it.
Plus, those companies offer a guarantee of sorts, not particularly good but better than nothing. Ours said that if there was a problem they would find us another rental comparable to the property we had rented, but then in the small print said that if they couldn’t find a comparable priced property they would refund our money. Not great, but better than nothing.
We chose a Superhost!
We decided that we would rent from a superhost, a person who had a record of rentals, and had actual reviews from Canadians about a recent stay in their rental.
We’re glad we did as our original rental in the Algarve went south, and it was only the excellent efforts of the person we rented from that rescued our stay in Albufeira. I write about that experience on another page in this blog.
Once here, you can look for the absolute best rental for the next time here in the Algarve.
Really, that may be the best was to find a location here that suits you and your needs to a ‘T’.
What does it cost to rent in the Algarve?