Rent a Villa Without a Villainous Price

Who hasn’t dreamed of a villa vacation in Tuscany or Provence? Although the better properties can cost as much as $5,000 per week, renting a modest house can bring the rate down to $900. Before beginning a search, keep a few guidelines in mind:

* Avoid July and August, the high season. Europeans flood the market then, and the prices are triple what you would pay in May or late September.

* Look for a property without a swimming pool, which often tacks 40% or more onto the price. The availability of villas without that feature is another good reason to go in the shoulder season or off-season, when you won’t need the pool to offset the oppressive heat.

* Instead of a villa, consider one of the many large and beautiful apartments of Tuscany or Provence--accommodations with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms, on farms and in country mansions, that offer the same experience as a stand-alone house but for far less money.

* Join with friends and family members and share the home and the cost. The $3,500 price tag for an elegant manor, replete with antiques and Oriental rugs, suddenly becomes affordable when split among four couples.

Although dozens of U.S. real estate brokers offer villa rentals in Europe, most are go-betweens for big European agencies. They do little more than show you the address of a home they’ve never seen and then collect a sizable commission. A broker who has actually seen most of the properties he rents is Carl Stewart of Vacanze in Italia, 22 Railroad St., Great Barrington, MA 01230; telephone (800) 533-5405, Internet https://www.homeabroad.com. He or his representatives have firsthand knowledge of the 200-plus Italian homes in his catalog, more than half of which are offered for less than $900 a week. He has an equal number in France and several in other countries.

In Italy, there’s Veronica Ficcarelli at Communicart, 5 Viale Machiavelli, 50125 Firenze, Italy; tel./fax 011-39-055-233-6920, Internet https://www.communicart.it. She is a former advertising executive who represents 25 homes in the Tuscany area. The best of them are apartments on large, glamorous estates, starting at about $485 a week in high season, even lower in other months; they are equipped with full kitchens, some with dishwashers and washing machines. She also has a terrific collection of bed-and-breakfasts starting at $70 a day.

In Provence, seek out a gi^te, a cottage that has been inspected and rated by a national oversight organization called Gi^tes de France and given a rating of one to four, one being bare-bones accommodations, four being the most luxurious.

You can contact the Gi^tes de France office in the departement (county) you wish to visit (Internet https://www.gites-de-france.fr/fr/index.htm), or you can contact a U.S. agency such as Provence West, Box 272884, Fort Collins, CO 80527; tel. (970) 226-5444, fax (970) 226-5577, Internet https://www.provencewest.com. They represent as many as 80 gi^tes ranging from $580 to $905 a week.

Another reliable source for France rentals is Homestyle, tel. (206) 325-0132, fax (206) 328-3673, Internet https://www.francehomestyle.com, which specializes in lodgings that are, according to owner Claudette Hunt, a cut above a gi^te.

“I’m finding that fewer of my clients will accept having no telephone, or one bathroom for six people,” she says.

She has amassed 300 homes, including apartments in Paris, by knocking on all 300 doors that appealed to her. A typical example is an 18th century two-bedroom home in the Provencal village of Nizas, surrounded by vineyards and fields of lavender and thyme. It rents for $750 a week from June 17 through mid-September, $600 at other times.