Snowbirds how do you do it?
 

I would like to winter in TV soon and keep a home up north for a few years and assume many of you did the same. As far as costs, not looking for anything perfect, just have a few items i am not sure of.
Water- I assume sprinklers stay on while up north? Approx$
Sewer-Is it based on water consumption, or just a hard fee?
Electric- leave air on to control humidity? Approx$
Trash- Can it be put on hold?
Cable- same as above?
Thanks in advance
Bud

Water - You need to run your irrigation year round, doesn't cost much. Our base water fee is $8.15 per month and running our sprinklers is about $15 per month on top of the base.

Sewer - There is a base fee regardless of use and then a fee for usage. When not there you still have to pay the base fee. Our sewer base is $31.27 and even when we are at the Villages home we never seem to go over the base rate for sewer.

Electric - Yes, you absolutely need to run your A/C at about 81 degrees when you are not there to control humidity. Costs more in the summer than spring and fall, for us between $75 and $100 per month. Depends on size of home, how efficient home is, and quality of A/C system. We have a relatively small home.

Trash - Can not be put on hold. Costs us $19.38 per month (I think it just went up a couple of bucks but have not got the newest statement yet) regardless of being there or not.

Cable - We have an antenna for free TV and use the unlimited data plan for our cell phones as our internet source when at the Villages so I can not answer this question. We very much like the free TV our antenna pull in and watch very little TV anyways. We buy DVD's for $1 each at estate sales and watch movies sometimes. The cellular internet is OK but not great. We can make T-times, dinner reservations, check e-mails, and of course check TOV. But we can not stream. There is too much fun stuff to do in the Villages to waste a lot of time watching TV and being on-line.

Hope this helps.

One last thing, even though Snowbirds pay a base water and sewer as well as trash and amenity fees while they are not at the Villages, which subsides the rates of the full timers, many of them will still endlessly complain about you!

ahhh but you guys sure make up for it when your return....
Their goes those entrance/exit arms... :1rotfl:

In addition to the items posted above:

Cable/Internet: If you have Comcast/Xfinity, you can request it be put into Vacation mode. The only issue is that often when you resume normal service, you may loose any discounts you may have had. Presume other companies have a similar option.

Also, get your self a good house watch service. (Check with your neighbors to see who they use.) You wouldn't want to return after 4 months and find out the A/C for example, stopped working right after you left. They will also check that the guy you contracted with to mow your lawn actually showed up.

My wife and I are not snow birds, we come down all year to our home, but we primarily live up north because I cannot retire for another year or so. Last year we were down every couple weeks. This year we did a long one in the summer and one trip a few weeks back.

There are a couple things that I find invaluable.

-Wifi Irrigation controller. I bought the Hunter 6 zone. It is very easy to install and can be controlled from anywhere there is an internet connection.

-Flume Water monitor. This allows you to see how much water you are using. It will also alert you if it suspects there is a leak somewhere. Last year a contractor ran over one of our heads and we got socked for an extra 40,000 gallons of water because I was unaware of it. Next time I will know and can shut off the irrigation.

-Wifi thermostat. I have the Honeywell, but the Nest and Ecobee work as well. This will alert you if the temp in your house goes out of norm for a period of time, indicating a problem with the heat pump/AC.

-Wifi garage door opener. I let the cart people pick up my cart for maintenance. I do this from NJ.

-I have a Nest doorbell. I can talk to people who show up and keep an eye on the front door.

-I also have security cameras up giving me a pretty good look around the property and one we set up inside when we leave in case something blows in or whatever.

As for "cable" we stream everything using the Hulu package "HULU + Live TV". You can suspend service for 12 weeks at a time. The only real issue with that is sometimes our trips don't neatly fall on the billing dates so we bump into a new month. It's saved us a bunch though.

we were 'snow bunnies' (frequently flying back and forth) for 15 years and 'snow birds' for 5 before becoming year round
residents 5 years ago

there were a few things that we could do to reduce the costs when away for half the season, mainly what a previous post on this threat indicated...

when we had two homes, our focus was maintaining both assets regardless of which location we were in

that made for an easy reentry no matter which one we were traveling to...and reduced the worry that something would go wrong when we were 1400 miles away

life became a lot simpler once we settled on one location

In addition to the other comments - Might want to consider turning off the water heater and water supply. if the water heater should spring a leak, you could come home to a very wet house. We also turned off the icemaker and unplugged computer and TV.

We maintain our TV house, cost does not really change much from when we are in house. Our north home runs about the same, except I don’t have to pay garbage, and vaca Comcast. The lake house, for the summer is the cheapest to run, no cable, net, community trash. Fireplace with gas furnace, no air. Down the road we will sell the north 5 bed, Hugh basement, and keep the lake house.

We also had two homes for five years or so and you can do it obviously, many do.
We did find life got easier when we made a full-time move down here and just had one home. Good luck in your venture.

Need to add lawn service as some don’t. No yard is maintenance free.

:bigbow:

That cost is included in cost on running the house, empty, or lived in. It’s the snow you can’t pin down, since the push is by the inch ( lake house needs the roof shoveled). I use the numbers from the worst winter, and if it’s less bonus.

My biggest surprise is how fast plants and trees grow. Even with landscaper/ tree trimmer/ weed puller/ fertilizer er/ you can't keep up as I would like, I am now reducing entire volume of plants and trees. When the house was built the owner planted too much/ too close to the house.

I was referring to snowbirds property in villages. I can go into any area villages and pick out some snowbird houses that either don’t have lawn guy or he is cheating them and not doing the work while there are gone for summer.

We not only have cameras inside and out of all our smart homes, so we know when and what is done at any time. Maybe some don’t have ability to add Modern technology, or don’t give a crap.
Last week I watched the lawn guys trim the palms, while we were inline at Disney. WHile at north home, the guys raked 14 bags of leaves, and put them at the curb. And adjusted the temp inside because of a sharp temp drop. Now if we could just get the wild life to stop posing at the lake house cameras my alerts would be less