Handgraaf Estates places and directs private service teams — and every one of them works inside a single written record of your property. Vendors, service history, maintenance, projects and annual spend, in one place you can open at any moment.
Software firms sell you a system and leave you to operate it. Staffing agencies send people and leave no record behind them. We do both, and the record is the proof.
A floor, not a running count. We do not name the estates we manage, and we do not publish a client list.
A principal's holdings rarely stop at the front door. The record is built to the assets you actually own — and each one carries the same maintenance intervals, vendor accountability and cost history as the residences.
Primary, secondary and investment properties, domestic and abroad — each with its own zones, systems and staff.
Aircraft coordination alongside the rest of the portfolio: scheduled inspection intervals, service records and vendor documentation.
Vessels tracked with the same rigour as a residence — haul-outs, bottom work, crew coordination and yard invoices.
Collection vehicles, daily fleet, art and valuables — service history, appraised value and condition on record.
Vendor contacts, warranties, service history, receipts and every scheduled visit typically live in a dozen places — a phone, an inbox, a filing cabinet, and one person's memory.
We consolidate them into a single record per property. Nothing depends on any one person still being here.
It is a workflow, and it reads the same whether the asset is fifteen minutes away or in another state. Four steps, repeated, recorded every time.
Every asset, zone, vendor and warranty catalogued once, per property.
Preventative work is placed on a calendar before it becomes a repair.
Vendors are dispatched, supervised and closed out by your manager.
Invoice, photo and outcome attach to the asset — permanently.
You should know where a renovation stands without fielding contractor calls. Each project moves through defined stages, and you can look in at any moment — or not at all.
Only one column ever asks anything of you. The rest is visibility.
Every expense is classified as capital or operating as it is recorded, so the annual picture builds itself. Recurring service is predictable. Replacement cycles are foreseeable. Neither should arrive as a surprise.
Your accountant receives a clean export rather than a box of receipts.
This is the financial view as an owner sees it — three residences, every category, one page. No spreadsheet to assemble, no receipts to chase.
| Category | La Jolla | Jackson Hole | Italy | Year to date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Landscape & grounds OpEx | 38,400 | 9,600 | 12,000 | 60,000 |
| Pool, spa & water OpEx | 14,200 | — | 4,800 | 19,000 |
| HVAC & mechanical OpEx | 9,800 | 6,400 | 3,900 | 20,100 |
| Housekeeping & linens OpEx | 52,000 | 11,500 | 18,000 | 81,500 |
| Roof & envelope CapEx | — | 46,000 | — | 46,000 |
| Vehicles & vessel CapEx | 21,300 | 4,100 | — | 25,400 |
| Total | 135,700 | 77,600 | 38,700 | 252,000 |
Most emergencies at an estate were visible months earlier. Organising the house is what makes them visible.
Every system in the house catalogued by area, with its age, warranty and service interval.
Secondary residences prepared to a written standard before you arrive and after you leave.
Who may enter, when, and under whose supervision — recorded rather than remembered.
Household service does not belong in your personal calendar. It belongs in one estate calendar your manager maintains, from which you see only what genuinely requires you.
The objection we hear most is that handing over the house means losing hold of it. The opposite is true: most owners have less control before a manager, not more, because nothing is written down.
You set the threshold. Work below an agreed figure proceeds. Above it, nothing moves without your approval.
Every vendor is accountable to a record. What was quoted, what was done, what was paid, and who authorised it.
Nothing lives in one person's head. If your manager changes — including us — the estate does not restart from zero.
You can audit any line, any time. Not on request, not next quarter. Open the tab.
An estate is seen — by guests, by family, by staff, by an insurer's adjuster on the worst day of the year. What they see is either a standard or an improvisation.
Ready on arrival. No scramble before you land, no apology for what was missed.
Staff working to a written standard rather than to memory, so quality does not move with personnel.
Documentation that holds up. Photographed condition, dated service, itemised value — for insurers, appraisers and counsel.
Nothing improvised in front of guests. The house looks effortless because the work happened weeks earlier.
Each estate is a separate, isolated database. No owner's records touch another's, and there is no shared directory of clients.
Access is granted to named accounts only, enforced at the database itself — not merely hidden behind a login screen.
Access is revocable at any time, by you. Should our engagement end, the record of your home remains with your home.
Nothing here requires you to change how you live. It requires roughly four hours of your time, once.
Every system, zone, vendor and warranty catalogued on site. Existing staff and vendors retained unless you say otherwise.
Preventative calendar built, deferred maintenance surfaced and priced, approval thresholds agreed in writing.
You receive access to your own dashboard. From here the record builds itself, and your involvement is by choice.
Estate software is bought once and then ages. Ours is maintained continuously, because we operate it every day on live estates — when something is missing, it is built, and every principal benefits from it.
We use current tooling, including AI, inside our own practice: structuring records, drafting scopes of work, and summarising vendor history so your manager spends their hours on the property rather than the paperwork.
A person signs off on every record. Nothing reaches your dashboard as fact until a manager has reviewed it.
Your data is not training material. It is used to run your estate and for nothing else.
Improvements arrive without a migration. No version numbers, no upgrade projects, no retraining your staff.
The term is used loosely, and it is used to mean three different things. Here is how we use it.
Running a private residence and everything attached to it on the owner's behalf: staff, vendors, maintenance, projects, budgets and records. The manager works for the household, not for a building or a landlord.
Administering a property as an investment. Rent collection, tenants, leases and compliance. The client is an investor, the occupant is a tenant, and the measure is yield.
Finding, vetting and placing the people who work in a private home. A placement agency's work ends when the candidate accepts. An estate manager's begins there.
The demonstration estate is fully populated and entirely fictional — a real structure with invented residents. Open any tab and see exactly what an owner sees.