Under the Tuscan Sun launched a thousand villa fantasies—and highlighted a host of problems that can afflict renters in a foreign land (or this one, for that matter). After leasing an Italian villa herself and touring numerous others with rental agents extraordinaire, Consumer News Editor Wendy Perrin renders the process foolproof with her hard-won wisdom—and a list of 35 thoroughly vetted and vouched-for villa rental specialists in 16 countries. Don't lease a home without it

Worksheets: Click here to download "How to Identify the Right Villa Rental Agent" and "What You Need to Know Before You Arrive"

Audio Slideshow: Wendy Perrin takes a tour through Tuscany in search of the perfect family-friendly villa

The List: Click here to view Wendy's Rolodex of top villa rental agents

My goal seemed easy enough at first: to rent a picturesque villa in the Tuscan countryside, with a pool and a cook, during the October grape harvest. Not so easy: meeting the diverse needs of the other five members of my group.

First, there were my sons, Dougie and Charlie: two- and three-year-old whirling dervishes who need a toddler-friendly house—none too common in a region where wobbly antiques, breakable bric-a-brac, twisting terra-cotta staircases, and open-hearth fireplaces are villa mainstays. Then, there was my husband, Tim, whose daily job would be to exhaust the kids, thereby minimizing their potential damage to the villa. For this, he needed a pool (preferably gated and heated), a lawn (preferably fenced), and nearby playgrounds and/or publicly accessible farms. My septuagenarian mother and her friend, our backup babysitters, needed railed staircases, good mattresses, and other modern comforts not often found in ancient abodes. We all needed a cook who could prepare dinners at the villa—not some fancy chef, but Mama Rosa from the farm down the road. And I needed a central location between Florence and Siena for pursuing my journalistic duties.

My assignment: to find out how—and from whom—to rent the perfect villa. For starters, I would locate and book a property on my own, test it out on my family, and learn from my mistakes. Then I would accompany villa-rental agents around Tuscany as they perused properties in their portfolios and evaluated potential new ones. The best agents personally handpick the loveliest villas, know them inside and out, and are the most likely to match travelers with an appropriate, first-rate property. It was my job to suss out the créme de la créme—in Italy and elsewhere—in order to compile the ultimate guide to villa rental specialists worldwide (see "Wendy's Rolodex").

But first I had to find a house for my family. I was not about to cheat and use my Condé Nast Traveler connections. I would go about this the way any layperson would. So I spent weeks on the Web, scrolling through an overwhelming array of villas offered by dozens of rental agencies. I phoned or e-mailed eighteen of them, but wound up with far too many unanswered questions about far too many properties. That's because no matter how many lovely photos I saw of a villa, it was impossible to know what wasn't being pictured or revealed in a write-up unless I knew someone who had been there. Sadly, only two agency reps had actually visited one of the villas I was considering, and only one knew it well enough to answer all my questions.