Need some advise. There are 6 of us going to Italy next March and want to rent a villa/farmhouse/apartment near Florence in the Tuscany countryside. Have any of you done this and what rental companies did you use? There are many to choose from on the web, but which are reputable? I'd really appreciate any input you can give me about this. The planning of this trip seems to be falling heavily on me. By the way, I posted this in the morning and now can't find my post . . . either I'm blind or it's gone!!
Thanks for your help

click on your name and all your posts will come up

try holiday-rentals.com. It is an established, very reputable company. My experience withthem have been tops.

Tenuta Lupinari

We stayed there for three weeks last summer. Had a three bedroom three bathroom with nice kitchen, living room, etc. with 3 couples. This place is fantastic.

www.lupinari.com

Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will check them all out. I did notice on one of the sites that the owners wanted a direct transfer of funds to their accounts. I don't know about that. But, anyway, you have given me some good sites to look into and I appreciate it. Thanks again

savannah, it is not unusual for owners of villas to require full payment in advance and they may likely require a wire transfer to their bank account to do so.

Ask yourself if you were renting out your own home to someone who contacted you by email from Europe, would you just let them arrive and pay you when they got there without worrying about their backing out? I've rented that way in Tuscany and elsewhere, but it is not necessarily the norm, and I've been pleasantly surprised when a place doesn't even require a deposit.

You can book through a rental company such as www.toscana-casa.com or you can book directly with the owner via a listing site such as www.greve-in-chianti.com, but in almost all cases you will have to pay a deposit of 30% or so at the time of confirmation and usually by sending it to the owner's bank account. Normally, they will refund this deposit minus transfer fees if you cancel more than a certain amount of time in advance - often 60 or 30 days. That's standard practice otherwise they have no guarantee that the visitor will show up.

Wiring money directly to the owners's European bank account is not a big deal for most American banks nowadays. You will need some financial info such as address and ID for the overseas bank, owner's account info, etc...but he/she should provide you with that. My bank charges me $35 for the transaction.

I'm surprised that slowtrav hasn't already been menioned. http://slowtrav.com/italy/

It is a great starting point