How Often Should a Vacant Luxury Home Be Inspected?

Owners ask this expecting a number. The number most often quoted in the home watch industry is weekly, and for a coastal Florida property left unoccupied that is a reasonable default. But the interval is not really a matter of convention. It is a function of how fast something can go wrong in your specific house, and how much damage it does per day while nobody is looking.

Start from the failure, not the calendar

The right way to set an interval is to ask: what is the fastest-moving failure this property can have, and how much does it cost per day undetected?

A supply line to a second-floor bathroom lets go at eleven in the morning. By that evening it is a ceiling. By day three it is the ceiling, the flooring below, the cabinetry, and a mold remediation. The difference between finding that on day two and finding it on day twelve is frequently six figures.

Meanwhile a corroded gate hinge is a failure that costs nothing per day. It will be exactly as broken in five weeks.

So: your interval is set by the fast failures, not the slow ones.

The fast failures in a closed Florida house

• Water under pressure. Supply lines, valves, water heaters, and the ice maker line. These do not announce themselves and they do not stop.
• Air conditioning. A failed air handler or a clogged condensate line in a closed house in July takes the interior from controlled to sixty percent relative humidity in a matter of days. Mold follows, and it follows quickly.
• Loss of power. Which is simply the previous item, plus a refrigerator.
• Intrusion and squatting. Rare, and enormously expensive when it is not caught early.

Every one of these is on a days-to-weeks clock, not a months clock. That is why weekly is the working standard, and why fortnightly is the practical floor for a property with active systems.

When to tighten the interval

Move to weekly, or more often, when any of these is true:

1. It is hurricane season, and the property is unoccupied.
2. The pool and irrigation are running unattended.
3. The house has had a water event before. Buildings repeat themselves.
4. Any major system is more than fifteen years old.
5. Work is underway, or has recently finished, and trades have had access.
6. Your insurer requires a documented interval.

The insurance question, which is now the deciding one

This has changed materially in the last few years. Carriers writing coastal Florida risk have tightened language around unoccupied and vacant property, and a number of policies now attach conditions: a documented inspection at a stated interval, a monitored alarm, a water shutoff, or all three.

Two things follow from that. First, read your policy, or ask your agent directly and get the answer in writing. Second, understand that if a requirement exists, an undocumented inspection does not satisfy it. "Someone looked in on it" is not a record. A dated report with photographs is.

What an inspection has to include to count

Interval is only half the question. A visit that consists of walking through the front room and leaving satisfies nobody.

At minimum, a visit worth its interval covers: the full exterior perimeter; every room's ceilings, wall bases, and window sills; under every sink; the water heater and its connections; the air handler, its pan, and its condensate line; recorded interior temperature and relative humidity; and a check that every opening is secured and the alarm is armed on departure.

And it produces a document. Recorded readings over a season are what let you see humidity trending up three weeks before it becomes a problem — a single visit cannot tell you that, but a sequence of them can.

A working answer

For a coastal Florida property held seasonally, with active systems and current insurance:

• Every 7 days during hurricane season and any period of full vacancy.
• Every 10 to 14 days in the temperate months, if systems are newer and the property has no water history.
• More often if your carrier says so, if the house has failed before, or if work is underway.

And every visit documented, because an interval you cannot evidence is an interval you do not have.