The apartment is fifteen hundred kilometres away. A neighbour mentions a leak in February. The contractor answers in Croatian, sends one number and no scope, and the invoice arrives before any photograph does.
None of this is unusual. Skilled trades on the coast are scarce, the season compresses demand into a few months, and a foreign owner has no practical way to compare two quotes or confirm that a finished job was finished well.
We stand in for you on site — the role an owner's representative performs on a building project, scaled to a single apartment or house, and extended to the quiet years in between.