The questions owners actually ask

Access to a private home is earned, not assumed. Our controls:

• Background screening. Every team member is checked against federal and state criminal databases before they hold a key.
• Bonding and insurance. Staff are bonded, and the company carries general and professional liability coverage. Certificates are provided to you in writing before the first visit.
• Graduated access. If you prefer, we begin with exterior-only service and move indoors once you are comfortable.
• Client references. Available on request from owners in comparable situations.
• A logged record. Every entry is documented with date, time and purpose, and appears in your monthly report.

• Physical keys are held in a commercial-grade lockbox system with an audit trail. Keys are not labelled with your address.
• Alarm codes and access information are stored encrypted, separately from the property record.
• Access is limited to your assigned property manager and the office principal.
• Codes are rotated on a schedule we will recommend and coordinate.

Many owners prefer smart locks or keypad entry, which removes physical keys from the equation entirely. We can specify and coordinate the installation.

Yes. We maintain the home improvement licensing required for the work we coordinate in New York and Connecticut, general and professional liability coverage, a surety bond, workers’ compensation for employees, and commercial auto coverage.

Current certificates of insurance and licence documentation are provided to every client before service begins, and are available on request at any time. We do not publish policy numbers on a public web page.

Because managing a property and living in one are different jobs, and only the second is optional to delegate.

Full-time residents come to us for the same reason people hire a bookkeeper while remaining perfectly able to add: the work is not difficult, it is constant. Sourcing and vetting trades. Being present for a four-hour service window. Chasing the contractor who did not come back. Remembering that the boiler was last serviced twenty months ago and the roof warranty expires in spring.

The clients who value this most tend to be people whose time is expensive or inflexible — running a business, practising medicine or law, travelling for work during the week — and people with larger properties where the volume of small decisions has simply outgrown one household. You keep living in your home. You stop administering it.

It is the most common pattern we see, and the one traditional services handle worst. A house that is occupied on weekends and empty midweek gets none of the benefits of either state: it still needs deliveries accepted, contractors admitted and systems watched, but only on the days you are not there to do it.

Guardian usually fits if your absences are predictable and measured in days. Peace of Mind fits if they are longer, less predictable, or if the property is large enough that the midweek gap is where problems compound. The assessment is where we work out which, and we will say plainly if the cheaper plan covers you.

No. Roughly speaking our clients divide into second and seasonal homes, part-time residences split with the city, and full-time family homes whose owners want the property run for them. We also work on estates with grounds and outbuildings, properties going through renovation, and homes being managed at a distance on behalf of an ageing parent.

What all of them have in common is a building that needs consistent attention from someone who is not the owner. Whether the owner sleeps there is not the deciding factor.

It depends on your plan.

• Guardian ($395/month): emergency contact during business hours, 8 AM–6 PM Monday to Friday. After hours, messages are answered the next business morning — but genuine emergencies such as an active water leak or a security breach are escalated immediately regardless of the hour.
• Peace of Mind ($995/month): 24/7 coverage, 365 days a year, with a two-hour dispatch commitment, direct mobile access to your property manager, and an emergency contractor network available around the clock.

We treat the following as emergencies: water intrusion, heating or cooling failure in extreme weather, alarm activation, power loss affecting critical systems, and anything posing an immediate threat to the structure.

Traditional property management exists to serve landlords. Its job is tenants, leases and rent collection, and it is reactive by design — something breaks, the tenant reports it, a work order is raised.

We work for the owner of an owner-occupied home. There is no tenant to report anything, so the inspection schedule is the reporting mechanism. The orientation is preventative: find the gutter seam before the ceiling stains, not after.

No, and we would rather you did not. Your electrician knows your panel. Our role is coordination and oversight, not replacement.

• We build a working relationship with your existing vendors.
• We become the single point of contact for scheduling, so the back-and-forth stops landing in your inbox.
• We are physically present for the visit and confirm the work was completed properly.
• We keep the documentation and warranty records.

Where you have no established trade — or yours is unavailable in an emergency — we draw on a vetted network of licensed professionals.

• Immediate emergencies (water, security, heat loss in extreme weather): Guardian, within 2 hours during business hours; Peace of Mind, within 2 hours, 24/7.
• Urgent issues (equipment failure, minor leaks, electrical faults): Guardian, same or next business day; Peace of Mind, within 4 hours.
• Routine matters: scheduled within 48–72 hours, subject to contractor availability.

No. Both plans run month to month.

• Thirty days’ written notice to cancel, with no penalty and no fee. Service runs to the end of the month you have paid for, then stops.
• Cancellation is by signed written notice, emailed, posted or handed over — not by telephone. It gives us both a dated record.
• Upgrades take effect immediately; downgrades require thirty days’ notice.
• Service can be suspended at a reduced holding fee for absences of ninety days or more.
• No setup fee, no cancellation fee, no administrative charges.
• Monthly fees are not refunded. Cancelling mid-month means the current month is your last, delivered in full.

A licensed manager spends 60–90 minutes at the property and produces a written report within 48 hours. It covers:

• Exterior condition — roof, gutters, siding, windows, drainage and grounds.
• Access and security — entry points, lighting, vulnerabilities.
• Utility shutoffs and emergency procedures, documented for your own reference.
• A maintenance priority list separating what needs attention now from what can wait.
• A seasonal calendar built around your specific building.
• A plan recommendation, and a proposal you are under no obligation to accept.

The report is yours to keep either way. Some owners use it purely to understand their own property better, and that is a legitimate outcome.

If you do go ahead, nothing is charged for three business days after you sign. You have that window to change your mind, and we take no payment during it.

The monthly fee covers management and coordination. You pay trades directly for the work itself — repairs, materials, routine services, utilities.

The only additional charges from us are overages: Guardian vendor visits beyond two per month at standard hourly rates; Peace of Mind project management beyond five hours at $125/hr; and a $150 dispatch fee on emergency callouts.

We publish the standards we hold ourselves to and credit you when we miss one. Specifically: a missed inspection is credited to your next invoice, a late monthly report has its fee credited, and a missed emergency dispatch commitment waives the dispatch fee and applies a service credit.

What we do not do is refund fees for inspections already walked, vendors already met or hours already worked. That work was performed, and a refund of it would not be a guarantee — it would be free labour. Credits against future service are the honest remedy, and they are the one we will actually honour without argument.

You can also simply leave. Sign the Change of Service form, email it to us, and service runs to the end of the month you have paid for and stops. No penalty, no fee, no reason required. A month-to-month arrangement you can exit at will is a stronger protection than any refund clause, because it does not depend on us agreeing with you about whether the work was done.

Yes, and owners routinely do — upward before extended international travel, a major renovation or storm season, and back down afterwards. Upgrades are effective immediately with prorated billing. Downgrades take thirty days’ notice.

Raise it with your property manager first — most issues are a scheduling or communication failure and are resolved same-day. If it is not resolved, it escalates to the owner of the business within 24 hours, and we will meet you in person within 48 if that is what it takes.

From there: a written action plan with dates, a service credit where we failed a published commitment, corrective work at our cost where our error caused it, and a different property manager if the working relationship is simply not right. We follow up within a week to confirm it is actually fixed.

Your inspection history, photographs and property documentation are exported and sent to you. Keys are returned in person and access codes are formally released back to you in writing. We retain only what we are legally required to retain, as set out in the privacy policy.