When you leave a Florida home for the season, people offer you all kinds of help. A neighbor offers to keep an eye on it. A friend offers to stay over. A company offers to manage it. If you search for "vacation home management," you will find all of these mixed together.
They sound alike, but they do different jobs. Here is what each one is, in plain words, so you can pick the one your home needs.
Home Watch
Home Watch is a Visual Observation of a home or property looking for obvious issues.
In practice, that means a trained person visits your empty home on a set schedule. They walk the outside and every room. They look for the small signs that something is wrong, like a drip under a sink or a musty smell. Then they send you a report.
Home Watch is for a home that sits empty while you are away. Nobody lives in it, and nobody rents it. You still own every decision. If something needs repair, you choose who fixes it.
At Gulf Coast Home Watch, Sekina visits weekly, or every two or three weeks. You get a GPS-stamped photo report after every single visit. You can read a step-by-step account in what happens on a Home Watch visit.
Property management
Property management is mainly for homes that are rented out. A property manager runs the rental side of the home for you. That work can include:
- finding and screening tenants
- signing leases and collecting rent
- handling tenant calls
- arranging repairs, often with vendors they pick
In Florida, this is its own line of work, with its own rules. If you plan to rent your home to tenants, this is the service to look for.
Gulf Coast Home Watch is not a property management company. We do not rent out homes or deal with tenants. We visit homes that are empty, and we report what we see.
House sitting
House sitting means someone stays in your home while you are gone. Often the sitter sleeps there. Many sitters also feed the pets and water the plants.
House sitting makes sense when you have animals that need daily care, or when you simply want someone living in the home. The sitter might be someone you know, or someone you hire.
A house sitter is there every day, which is a real plus. The trade-off is that a sitter may not be trained to look for early signs of trouble, like rising humidity or a slow leak. Many do not send photo reports. Before you choose, ask your sitter what they will check and how they will let you know.
Which one do you need?
Ask yourself one question: who will be in the home while you are gone?
- No one, and it will stay empty. You need Home Watch.
- Tenants who pay rent. You need property management.
- A person living there, often to care for pets. You need a house sitter.
- Tenants for part of the year, and empty the rest. You may use a property manager during the rental months and Home Watch while the home sits empty.
Why an empty home needs its own kind of care
Many of the homes we watch belong to seasonal residents who spend the summer up north. Their homes sit empty through the hottest, most humid months of the year.
The Home Watch Academy puts it simply: "An unoccupied home is a vulnerable home." Water and high humidity are the two biggest threats. With no one there to notice, a small drip or a broken air conditioner can go on for weeks.
That is why we follow the same routine on every visit. Sekina turns the water on slowly at the main. She works through the home one water zone at a time, then turns the water back off before she leaves and takes a photo to prove it. She checks that the humidity stays at or under 50%. If something looks off, she calls you the same day.
She does every visit herself, and she is a Graduate of the Home Watch Academy. You can see the full list of what we offer on our services page.
Not sure which one fits?
Tell us how your home will be used while you are gone, and we will tell you honestly whether Home Watch is the right fit. Book a 15-minute call with Sekina or call (941) 241-3334.