Insured House Watch
 

We’ve been told by our insurance company that anyone working in your home/yard for pay should provide the homeowner with a current certificate of insurance/workers comp for them and their employees. This protects them in the event of injury or death on your premises.

Your homeowners insurance will not cover what amounts to an employee-employer relationship.

Without this insurance, the homeowner could be sued should an accident occur. This is a real threat to protection of assets.

Can anyone recommend a reputable house watch company that can provide proof of insurance?

Our home watch was licensed and insured. Gave us a copy on initial interview

Can you please share their name and phone number?

Sadly the Villages sitter, Charlene moved from the Villages. We are full time and no longer require someone. But each one we interviewed was licensed and insured. Do a search here you will find multiple threads

We've used Village Watchdogs for ten years.
Roger Hall 352-430-3618

Maybe I'm missing something, but what kind of "license" does a home watch company have in Florida. To my knowledge, they are not regulated by the State of Florida.

Thanks for the replies so far. Any other suggestions?
I didn’t know house watch folks needed to be licensed. Any info on this?

Search function doesn’t work—at least for me. Would appreciate more input on a house watch that is insured. Thanks.

I think the issue that you will find is the workman's comp insurance. Most of the home watch people have a general liability insurance but, as sole proprietorships, they don't have workman's comp insurance. I believe that they don't have to either.

I have home watch, although it provides a piece of mind in some situations I get more feedback and control from making my home a smart home. Temp/humidity of unoccupied home? check. Water heater off? check, water off? check, what systems in the home are consuming power? check. Leak in irrigation heater found by home watch? No, found by smart systems? yes

Thanks for your post. I think you’re correct—workers comp. My concern is if the home watch person is injured on our premises, his health insurance wouldn’t cover him (since this is an employee-employer relationship, I.e., I’m paying him).

For the same reason, my homeowners policy won’t cover him. He, or his heirs, could be put in a position of having to sue us to recover damages. In a worse case scenario, this liability could be devastating to us financially.

Our goal is to avoid taking on that liability.

Those are all very valid points and I agree. That said I have timed a home watch person in our neighborhood, from the moment she left the car until she returned to it 147 seconds. Of course MY home watch person would do better certainly with the weekly checks promised.

Well, no, not really. It's easy to see time of entrance (via the alarm system) to departure: two to four minutes. The weekly home checks are twice to once a month.

Now it doesn't take too long to walk through the home -that I can see- but two to four weeks of a plumbing leak would be a bad call to get. Point is there is room in this discussion for automating your home and mitigating the potential for damage to it. Now, I certainly understand that virtually no one will do this as THEIR home watch person checks the home all the time. But, as you say it is a liability to rely on someone else.

OP here. Back to my original question. Is anyone willing to share contact info for their insured home watch person?

We've used Village Watchdogs for ten years, and we find them to be reliable and responsible.
We have a home up north, and we are therefore absent for extended periods of time.
Roger Hall - 352-430-3618

We have used Ed and Mary from Safe Home House Watch for the last 5 years and couldn't be happier. 1-352-603-5333. Give them a call. You will not be disappointed. We feel very comfortable that our house is being watched by them while we are out of town for an extended period of time. Ken and Sue

https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...ght=home+watch

I found another company by doing a search. It's a TOTV Sponsor.
We haven't used this company, perhaps other residents can recommend.