Writing to the owner, and getting a reply
There is no "book now" button here. There is someone to write to — and how you write changes what you get back.
An owner letting a family house receives, in high season, more enquiries than they can honour. They do not answer in order of arrival: they answer first the ones they can answer.
An answerable enquiry fits in five lines and contains four things.
Dates. "This summer" is not a date. The owner can neither check their calendar, nor work out a price, nor tell whether your stay meets their minimum. Give two dates, even if they can move — and say so if they can.
Who is coming. Four adults are not two adults and two six-year-olds, and the house is not prepared the same way. It is also the only way to get an honest price where there is a per-person tourist tax.
A specific question. "Is the pool heated in May?", "May we bring a ten-kilo dog?", "Is there a travel cot?". A specific question calls for an answer; a message with no question calls for a copy-and-paste.
One sentence about you. Not a biography: a sentence. "We are two couples looking for somewhere quiet to walk from." The owner is letting their house, not a hotel room. They want to know who will be sleeping in it.
What does not help: asking for a discount in the first message, sending the same text to fifteen addresses, or promising to be "respectful tenants". Everyone writes it; nobody reads it any more.
And if the reply is slow: owners on this site show their average response time when it has been measured. It is there, under their name, and we do not write it — it is calculated from their last twelve months.