What to ask before you hand anyone your keys

There is no license for home watch in Florida.

No exam. No state board. No bond requirement, no regulator, no complaint process. Anyone with a business card and a key ring can call themselves a home watch company tomorrow, and some do.

That means the entire quality filter is you — and specifically, the questions you ask before you hand over a key to your empty home.

Here are the ones that actually separate people. Ask them of me too.

1. “Who does the visit — and is it the same person every time?”

Not “the company.” A name.

The whole value of this is pattern recognition: knowing your unit’s baseline. Knowing that stain was there last month. Knowing the AC sounds different than it did in March. That only exists if it’s one person, consistently.

If the answer is “one of our technicians,” you’re buying a checklist, not a caretaker. Someone who’s never been in your unit can only tell you whether it’s on fire.

Follow up with: “What happens when you’re sick, or away?” There’s no perfect answer to that. But there’s an honest one, and you’ll know it when you hear it.

2. “Can I see the checklist? In writing.”

Not “we do a thorough walkthrough.” The actual list.

If they can’t produce one, there isn’t one — and the visit is whatever they happen to remember that day, which drifts a little every month.

Then read it. If it doesn’t include the AC condensate drain and a humidity reading, they don’t know what actually goes wrong in a closed unit on this coast. Those two are most of it.

3. “What do I get after each visit — and how fast?”

The answer should be a dated report with photographs, the same day.

Watch for “we’ll call you if there’s a problem.” That sounds reasonable and it’s the biggest tell on this list. “No news is good news” is indistinguishable from nobody going. If the only thing you receive is silence, you have no idea whether you’re buying a service or a story.

Ask to see a real report — a full one, not a screenshot. Anyone serious has one ready.

4. “How many properties do you take?”

This one’s quietly revealing. There is a number at which the math stops working — where the same person physically cannot do every visit properly and something starts getting skipped.

Ask if they have a cap. If they don’t, ask why not. And if the answer is “as many as we can handle” — that is the answer.

5. “What happens between visits?”

The honest answer is: nothing. Nobody is watching. A monthly plan means up to thirty days in which a failure can run undetected.

That’s not a criticism of monthly service — it’s arithmetic. But an operator who won’t say it plainly is managing your impression instead of your risk.

This is the question that should decide your interval, not price. The damage is a function of how long it ran — a leak found in a week is a plumber; the same leak found in five is a very different conversation.

6. “What do you not do?”

The most useful question on the list.

An operator who says yes to everything is selling. Real answers sound like limits:

• It isn’t a home inspection, and there’s no opinion on the structure or its systems.
• Nothing gets opened, dismantled, or tested beyond running a tap and a flush.
• Nothing behind a wall, above a ceiling, or under a floor.
• No repairs.
• Nothing is guarded — between visits, the place is simply unwatched.

If they can’t name a single limit, they haven’t thought about what happens when something goes wrong. Which means, when it does, you’re their liability plan.

7. “What do you do before a hurricane?”

Be careful with this one, because the appealing answer is the wrong one.

If someone promises to shutter your place in the 48 hours before landfall — ask how many clients they have, and how they intend to be in thirty units at once. They can’t. Everyone’s worst day is the same day. A promise like that breaks on the one occasion it mattered.

The honest version: they hand you trusted vendors well before the season, and after the storm they tell you the order they work in — not a time. An operator who publishes an order has thought about it. One who quotes you a response time is guessing, and you’ll find out when you can’t reach them.

8. “Are you insured — and can I see it?”

General liability, a bond, and errors & omissions. Not the word “yes.” The certificate.

This is a person who will hold a key to your empty home. Ask what the bond actually covers, and who it pays.

9. “Where do my keys and codes live?”

Who has them. How they’re stored. Whether entry gets logged, and whether you can see that log.

“In my truck” is a real answer people give.

10. “What’s the term — and can I pause for the summer?”

Plenty of operators will happily let you pause. Before you take that as a feature, think about what you’re pausing.

Summer here is hurricane season and the humidity months. A failed AC in July in a closed unit is the expensive scenario. The months you’d want to pause are exactly the months that matter — you’d be paying for the half of the year when the place is at its safest.

If someone offers a seasonal pause without blinking, they’re selling you what you asked for. That’s not the same as selling you what protects the place.

Notice the pattern

Read back through the good answers and you’ll see something: about half of them are “no.”

No inspections. No pre-storm heroics. No unlimited client list. No guaranteed response time. No seasonal pause. No, nothing is watched between visits.

Anyone can say yes. Yes is free. The operator who tells you plainly what they won’t do is the one who has thought seriously about the day it goes wrong — and that’s the only day any of this is actually about.

One last question

Ask them what actually goes wrong in a closed condo here.

If the answer is “break-ins and storms,” they don’t work this coast. The real answers are a drain line, a supply line, and a humidity number — the quiet things that start on a Tuesday and cost you in November.

You’re not really buying visits. You’re buying whether somebody will tell you the truth about your home when you’re a thousand miles away and the truth is inconvenient.

Every question above is just that one, asked sideways.

Robert Kirkland is an active Florida real estate agent on the east-central coast and runs Anchor & Key, a home and boat watch service for owners who aren’t here year-round. If you’d like someone to walk your place and show you what a real visit report looks like — no cost, no obligation — get in touch.