International property sale

A two-year retainer as property manager for an Italian client based in London, overseeing properties across the USA, Japan, Portugal and Italy, alongside her financial affairs and travel. The centrepiece was the sale of a substantial Jacksonville property, coordinated with legal teams in both Italy and Florida.

An elderly lady, full of spirit and stories. A political journalist who'd spent a lifetime travelling the world, meeting extraordinary people, and quietly building a portfolio of homes worthy of a memoir. Working with her felt less like managing assets and more like being trusted with chapters of a remarkable life.

We started with consultation, understanding her estate, agreeing hours and scope. I built a property management system from scratch: templates for weekly and monthly updates, a collaboration framework across continents. Ongoing work covered travel, maintenance, finances, repairs and refurbishment. The Jacksonville sale meant sourcing legal teams, gathering documents, and flying out to close it in person.

Properties spanning four countries meant constant flexibility, being available across wildly different time zones, often outside normal hours. I built one unified system to manage everything, but it had to flex enough to suit each property's quirks, its local agents, and its own rhythm. No single template fit them all.

The client was letting go her favourite property, the one holding years of memories with someone she loved deeply. There was real grief in that sale, beneath the practicalities. She also wasn't quick to trust, understandably, given how much she was handing over. It took roughly six months before she let me properly in.

The Jacksonville sale closed cleanly, the wider estate ran smoothly for two years, and what started as a working relationship became genuine trust. Managing someone's life across four countries asks a lot, the real success was that she never had to worry about any of it.

Trust isn't given upfront with high-net-worth clients managing complex, emotionally loaded estates. It is earned through consistency, month after month. I also learned the value of building flexible systems rather than rigid ones. No two properties, or people, work the same way, and the system has to bend to them, not the other way round.