What does it really cost to hold a property?

The price is the number that stays in mind. It is also the only one most families know precisely. What the property asks for every year afterwards is spread across several people, several invoices and several accounts, and it is rarely written down in one place.

What goes into the annual figure

• Insurance. Building, contents, third-party liability, and any specific cover for art, wine or equipment kept there.
• Routine maintenance. Garden, pool, heating and cooling, alarm and surveillance contracts, the small recurring interventions nobody records as capital expenditure.
• Major works. Roof, facade, plant replacement. They arrive every few years and, spread over their real life, they are part of the annual cost.
• Staff. Housekeeping, gardener, caretaker, with the employer’s social contributions, which in some jurisdictions add a third to the gross figure.
• Utilities. Heating, electricity, water, telecommunications, and the fixed portion that is paid whether the house is used or not.
• Taxes and charges. Local property taxes, service charges in a co-ownership, and where applicable the annual levies on the holding structure.
• Financing. Interest and fees on the mortgage or Lombard facility behind the property, which is the line most often kept in a different file from the rest.
• Legal matters. A boundary dispute, a disagreement with a neighbour, a contested renovation, a co-ownership assembly that ends badly. These arrive unannounced, cost real money, and belong to the property as much as the roof does.
• The time of whoever chases all of the above. Not usually counted, and usually the most expensive item on the list.

Why the total is so rarely known

Nothing on that list is hidden. Each item is known to someone: the broker knows the insurance, the administrator knows the maintenance, the payroll knows the staff, the bank knows the financing. Three competent people, three correct numbers, and nobody holding the sum.

The real gap is not diligence, it is the absence of management control: something that lets the family see what was expected, what was spent, and where the two parted company. Without it, an overrun is discovered when the year closes, which is the one moment at which nothing can be done about it.

What changes when it is in one place

Two questions become answerable in seconds rather than in a fortnight. What this property costs to hold, all in. And what one category costs across everything the family owns, so that the insurance line of a villa can be compared with the insurance line of a vessel and of a company, and negotiated as one position rather than five.