House sitting unoccupied -- issues?
 

Hello -- We are purchasing a home in the Creekside Cabanas, fully furnished, and quite lovely. However, we will only be using it sporadically for the first two years. We may rent but haven't decided yet.

We are concerned about issues leaving a house unoccupied for two or three months at a time. From reading the posts, I know many of you do this so I am appealing to your expertise. Among our questions are:

--Are there house watching services, how reliable are they, how much do they cost?
--We will have a golf cart. What do we need to do, i.e., run out the gas? store it somewhere?
--What landscaping services do we need. Landscaping is minimal, low maintenance, so will house watcher suffice to make sure sprinklers are working?
--Appliances, turn off, leave on.

Mostly we want to know about those issues or problems we haven't thought about but y'all may have discovered.

We are excited about our new home and look forward to becoming full timers.

We use Mary and Ed Edwards to watch our house. They are great. The are always there when we need them and give us excellent information. They've notified me quickly of issues they have spotted with my home and yard and help get them resolved.
They are members of TOTV. You can get their contact information by doing a search or if you like I can P.M. the information to you. They have a website as well.

Check under Home Watch and Security Services


https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...ad.php?t=20753

Mary & Ed Edwards watch ours as well, nice to get their weekly email.

Ours has been a rental for over 4 years - now going to be snowbirds, but will have them watch in summer while we are gone. Our previous homewatcher wasn't a good communicator. Would ask questions and not always get complete answers, so we were never really sure if things we asked about were getting done. Mary & Ed are great about this.

You should, however, get to know your neighbors, especially any full-timers (FROGS), exchange email addresses and phone #s. Give them your caretaker contact info.

We had a sprinklerhead break a couple of years ago, fortunately in the front, and our neighbors notified us and our caretaker that same morning. We have a CYV and a break in the back, depending on location, might only have been noticed by our caretaker's weekly check.

I had someone else who cleaned, lived outside the Villages, but very dependable. You might think you don't need that service if you're not renting, but we found also that we didn't have time to do a thorough cleaning, change sheets, etc, move chairpads and lamp from lanai, etc., and leave aat 6 am for our long drive back to Ohio and work, and still enjoy our limited vacation time.

PM me if you would like his contact info. Mary & Ed are on this forum - I think their website is Safehomewatch.com

Welcome to TOTV and congratulations on your new home. We all know how exciting a time this is for you, because we've lived through it!

There is a ton of information that has been discussed in previous threads, and not everyone feels the same way. Information about suggestions for house watch companies, surge protectors, dehumidistats, pest control companies, what to do when you leave, pros and cons of turning fridge and gas off, etc. Of course you'll need to leave electric on for your air conditioning.

You can access this information by using the search button on the blue panel at the top of the page. I think you'll find these previous posts very helpful.

We have a home watch company (Village Watchdogs). Our neighbours also keep an eye on our property. But it's not their job to look after our house and they travel also. So I personally think a home watch company is very important. We have a lawn care company, and we use Bates for pests. Everyone has a different opinion. We leave our Par Car plugged in most of the time, sometimes the housewatch people leave it unconnected for a couple of weeks.

Because we leave for a long period, we unplug our fridge, tv, etc. We leave our gas connected. We have a dehumidistat which has saved us bundles on electricity.

Good luck with your new house. You'll be full time before you know it!

We use Mary and Ed Edwards to watch our house and their service is exceptional.

We use and I HIGHLY recommend, Mary & Ed Edwards! They are great!
352-603-5333.

I can't even begin to tell you how we would be lost without them!

Army Guy

We use Mary and Ed Edwards.
Great job. We are pleased with their service and the weekly emails keeps us advised of what is going on with the house. I would highly recommend Mary and Ed.

House sitting
 

We use Diane from J&D -- frankly, she's the reason I got on TOTV today, to share what a great job she does and how she her service has yet again been "above and beyond". In several instances, I feel she has taken care of our home as if it were her own, certainly beyond what we expected them to do. If you want more info on J&D feel free to message me.

What do Mary and Ed charge

What are the cons to turning off the refrigerator when you are gone....gn

I hear it is a good idea to run dishwasher monthly to protect the rubber seals from drying out.

Unplugging Refrigerator
 

Personally, I would not unplug the refrigerator. If the door is left closed, it will develop an odor that you can't get rid of...so you will have to get rid of the box. The cost of running the refrigerator will likely be less than $5 per month. It's not worth the risk.

$35.00 per month

i unplug ALL appliances when i am gone as a precaution against a lightning strike....gn

If you're going to turn off ALL appliances, why not just flip the main breaker?