Finding and buying a vacation home is in many ways the easy part of the process. When you have found your ideal vacation home and made it your own, you still have a lot of decisions and a lot of work ahead of you.

This is where a good buyers agent really comes into his own. The day you close on the purchase of your home is not the end of my job. I encourage my buyers to continue to make maximum use of my many years experience in the vacation home industry. I have been involved in the rentals business here since 1996, so I can help in all sorts of ways.

I can recommend property management companies, local banks, furniture suppliers and home insurance brokers, find you a good handyman, tell you what you need to do to transfer the utilities into your name, make sure the HOA knows that you are the new owner, chase up your recorded title deed, etc.

If you are going to keep the home for your own use and not put it into a rentals program, then you are almost done. You will need to transfer the utilities into your name, perhaps find someone local who will keep an eye on your home when you aren't there, perhaps clean the home after you have used, it, cut the grass, care for the pool.

If you are going to put vacation rentals into your new home, as most owners do, you will need to decide if you are going to sign up with one of the larger management companies who will provide most or all of the rental bookings, or whether you will work to get at least some of the bookings yourself.

Some time ago I wrote a short guide called the Absent Owner's Guide, a digest of my own experiences and observations. Theis guide is now a little outdated, but you are welcome to refer to it for some general background.

One important aspect of a successful rental home these days is to identify and provide those features that are most important to renters, and which will encourage more bookings at better rates. This question comes into play at an early stage, usually while a prospective buyer is still considering purchasing options - what type of home to buy, in what location, and with what features.

You can download The Absent Owners Guide here. When it has downloaded, click on 'run' (not on 'save'). If you are asked to put in a password, use 'vacation' (all lower case) to get access to the full guide..