If you leave home for extended periods longer than a month (vacations, 2nd homes, work, etc.), what steps do you take to both secure AND maintain your home and property while away? I’m especially interested in single family detached homes over condo’s maintained by an HOA.
Leaving is easy in winter: Winterize (shut off and drain the water), set HVAC to low, turn the HWH to vacation mode, set timers randomly. A friend checks on the house every few weeks. Local (small town) police occasionally check. No issues with yard care, as everything is dormant. No public sidewalks to shovel.
Warmer seasons present more of a problem. Even our plumber shuts off his own main water valve when gone for more than 3 days – he’s seen too many issues with accidental leaks or blown valves on customer homes . We can easily hire lawn care (cutting, treating), but a sprinkler system will not work in our situation, and landscaping can die if left unattended for over 1 week in the dry season.
More specifics:
• Do you have a security system that alerts your phone? Or alerts a company? Which system?
• Do you have a neighbor, friend, or family member visit? How often? (No matter how explicit we are with USPS, occasional mail is delivered).
• How do you handle summer yard maintenance, especially watering, if you don’t have an in-ground sprinkler system? One friend has timers on their hoses, but they too can fail.
• Have you ever had a long-term pet or house sitter for more than a month, besides a friend or family member? How did you find them? Did you create a written agreement?
• Are there maintenance or management companies that “do it all”?
• Any other advice?
We had a second home in another state for a few years.
Yes, we had ADT. They called if the alarm was tripped and we could also check from our phone if doors/windows were opened.
We also had Arlo cameras that we could check from our phone and water sensors in the basement near the hot water heater, in the laundry room, and in the kitchen that would alert our phones.
We had a local friend who had a key if there was an emergency and one of he neighbors kept an eye out if anything was accidentally delivered. Same neighbor watered pots and such but we mostly had a no maintenance little yard (hardscape).
Yes there are management companies that you can hire. Our general contractor used to do empty house checks and be the emergency calls for clients who were snowbirds. An old realtor of ours used to do it as well.
We have a local pet sitting/house watching agency in our town that we’ve left our dog with. They stay in the house while we are away and take care of him, the plants, the mail, etc… We found them through word of mouth. They screen, bond and insure their sitters and we’ve never had a problem.
My only advice is that it was easier than we expected with modern technology and that most people are great!
One tricky thing around here is that they will only hold our mail for 30 days. When our neighbors went away for 6 weeks, they had us check mailbox after 30 days…. fetch the hold-pile and mail that arrived after that. Our boxes are locked, so all was safe if we missed a day.
If you turn off your main water valve then you may not need to worry about this…when I used to live in a house, I used to turn off my washer’s water valve whenever I was away to prevent flooding.
I would make sure you get your bills, bank statements online.
We have been going back and forth for the past year between two homes. Never more than 2-3 weeks. We always turn off the main water valve in the house when we leave for any period of time (even a few days - we have had too many floods in the past).
We lower the hot water tank temperature and lower the heat (or turn off the AC in the summer). In the winter, we also turn off the humidifier (as it needs water) and leave any under sink cabinets open to prevent freezing.
We have a neighbor who collects our mail and shovels any snow. We have a lawn service who mows (even when we are home). I have gotten rid of all house plants and annuals so that there is no required watering when we are not around.
We have set up an automatic light through alexa to be on in the evenings. We have an old iphone set up with the security app Alfred that acts as a security camera. We have changed all of our bills to paperless and automatic payments. We occasionally come home to a unusual paper bill (medical, etc.), but it is usually not something that would be a problem to be a little late with.
My neighbor will also get any unforeseen packages and I have given them our garage door code so they can leave it in there if needed.
We have never been able to successfully get the mail to consistently hold the mail, so we’ve generally ended up having a neighbor with a key check no matter what is supposed to happen. We have a Nest so we can see if someone (like the mailman sigh) comes to the door. We turn down the heat in the winter. We’ve never turned off the main water, but maybe we should.
any time that i’ve left for an extended period of time (2+ weeks), i arranged for my neighbors to grab my mail as well as mow the lawn.
I also let neighbors know on all sides of the house every time i leave for more than an overnight, just so they can let me know if anything crazy happens. the one does have a key.
I’ve never thought to turn off the water, but I actually did get bit by that once so that’s a good idea - toilet sprung a leak while i was away for 2 days.
i turn the heat or a/c down a bit depending on the time of the year.
we tend to travel a lot - usually for like long weekends as opposed to long periods of time - but we usually leave one of our cars parked in front of the house and a light on so it always looks like someone is home.
i’ve contemplated buying a secondary property and had many of the same questions as the OP - and every time i look into it i seem to land back on traveling wherever i want to go for shorter periods as opposed to feeling like I always have to go to my 2nd property/vacation home. This is a helpful thread in case we ever decide to actually do it.
Do you turn the water off at the meter? Because crap can happen between the meter and the house valve. We had a water main break… good thing we were home, and Mr. B was able to dig the spot up before the plumbers showed up. The digging saved us a small fortune in plumbers’ fees, but the $900 water bill that followed was !!!
My brother and his wife used to housesit through a group called Trusted Housesitters: https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/ These are folks who stay in your house without charge. I think it is focused mainly on people with pets, but I am not sure. My brother and his wife had to start at the bottom in the US and build up their reputations/ratings, but by the end they were housesitting estates in Scotland. I was impressed and we are thinking of using the service in France. You might want to take a look.
tkoparent - I’ve heard of trustedhousesitters from a Global Nomad FB group I belong to - it seems like a really interesting and fun way (as a house sitter) to see the world!
Thanks, Bunsen - we are traveling this summer and I will check into how to turn off the water at the meter (can’t picture that but I’m sure hub can). We had a flood a few years ago in the house from a water leak in kitchen (while we were sleeping). Destroyed almost all flooring on first floor, soaked basement, ruined bottom of cabinets in kitchen. And that was just a few hours!
Yes, my brother and his wife had a blast housesitting. They did it more or less continuously for more than a year after selling off their house and putting everything into storage. As I understand it, you build up your reputation as you go along through positive reviews from the owners you housesit for and get better and better gigs as a result. They started in the US and then continued in the UK. It was very pet-focused and they ended up taking care of all kinds of animals - dogs, cats, pigs, goats, donkeys and so on. Many of the homes they stayed in were amazing, and I can only recall one place they complained about, early on. They are now theoretically settled in England but starting to get itchy feet and talking about doing it again, who knows where this time.
When I first moved here, my husband and I loved in a small place. We had friends I worked with, a bit older, who went away and we were invited to stay at their house. We loved doing that!
When we go away, we have neighbors who come to check on our house. They do this especially if there is a power outage, for example.
All bills….online payment.
Other mail collected by the neighbors who also toss all the junk mailings!
My D is a house sitter on this site. She’s not had any glamorous jobs yet, but she has enjoyed the opportunity to look after other families’ cats because she doesn’t live at home anymore and misses ours. She is doing a grad course overseas and will house sit during her Spring break.
She even found a house sit who allowed her two friends to come stay with her, for free, in a very expensive city. I think Trusted Housesitters is great.
We had the plumber install a lever turn off for the main water valve several years ago. Yes, stuff can happen between the street and your home, but many more things can happen inside your home.
Many years ago we were going away for a vacation and a friend needed a place to stay so he house sat for us. When we came back he said that he was hearing an annoying water type sound but could not figure out where. Turns out we had a leak in the backyard, underground between the house and the spigot. Thousands of gallons of water leaked underground (our water bill showed this). Because of this and other leaks we have had over the years (broken hose to toilet in the middle of the night, broken hose to washer 8 pm on Christmas Eve, etc.), we shut the main whenever we go on vacation.
My MIL has a second 3 season home in the mountains that my husband takes care of. He does shut off the water there for the winter.
We don’t shut off the water at our home when we travel. It wouldn’t be practical since we have cats and pet-sitters that come in to take care of them. We did have a bad leak out in the yard when we were out of town once, but our friend who was taking care of the cats caught it and we were able to talk her through shutting off the water at the meter.
We have WYZE cameras on everything at home and in the mountain house and WYZE thermostats, too, so we can control that via the app. It works pretty well.
I think the longest we’ve ever been away from home is 3 weeks.
We have lived through several water disasters and near disasters. Ugh. We have a cut off switch into the house near the water softener we can use. H and I fight about whether or not to leave the sprinklers on. Dead grass vs flooded yard and expensive water bill? What a choice!
As much as we plan, things still go wrong so we like to have live people come in daily, too. I have had a close friend come, an elderly neighbor who loves our cats, hired the kids’ friends, and welcomed friends visiting the area who need a place to stay. I alert the nearby neighbors so they can report anything unusual. My housekeeper and yard man are happy to come when we are away (for pay). No work for the housekeeper, but she is on the street anyway.
. We can easily hire lawn care (cutting, treating), but a sprinkler system will not work in our situation, and landscaping can die if left unattended for over 1 week in the dry season.
We had a water main break… good thing we were home, and Mr. B was able to dig the spot up before the plumbers showed up. The digging saved us a small fortune in plumbers’ fees, but the $900 water bill that followed was 
!!!