A second home that is also used by adult children, siblings or friends is still a vacant property for most of the year. The extra complication is not hospitality. It is the gap between stays: who has keys, how the house was left, and whether the next inspection is comparing like with like.
This is not rental management. There is no booking calendar to run. There is an access and condition problem every time a different household closes the door.
Treat every stay as a handover
Ask arriving family to receive a short property note: alarm, water, shutters, bins, who to call. Ask them to leave the house in the state the note describes. If they change a setting — a shutter left open, a fridge turned off — that change should be told to whoever inspects next.
A visual check after they leave is often more useful than a visual check in the middle of their week. You want the vacant-period baseline back. How to leave an empty Algarve home is the closing list they can follow without learning the whole care plan.
Keys multiply unless you stop them
Each stay is a temptation to cut another set, hide one in a plant pot, or leave one with a friend “just in case”. That is how you lose the inventory. Keep a coded working set with the keyholder, and a listed set with the family members who actually need one.
When a lock changes, every set changes. When a guest relationship ends, the key comes back. Key holding in Portugal and neighbour, house-sitter or professional keyholder cover the professional side of the same problem.
Do not confuse a family stay with an inspection
A relative who spent a fortnight in the house has seen the rooms they used. They have not necessarily looked under sinks they never opened, or compared the pool level with June. If you rely on “they would have said something”, you are back to informal oversight.
Scheduled home watch visits can sit between family stays. The report then shows whether the house returned to the agreed vacant state.
Damage, breakages and the next contractor
Things get dropped. A tap is left dripping. Outdoor furniture moves. None of that needs a drama if the next report is factual and a contractor can be booked with your authority. What does need a rule is spend: who may call a plumber after a family stay, and up to what amount.
Contractor access is how that call becomes a recorded visit rather than another spare key.
Arrival of the owners
If you are flying in after relatives have left, arrival preparation should happen after their departure, not during it. You want to know the house as you will find it, not as it was in the middle of someone else’s holiday.
If family use is part of how the home works, say so in a property assessment. The plans can then be timed around those stays rather than pretending the house is either always empty or always yours.