Home Watch Cost Per Visit: What the Number Buys

What does home watch cost per visit? A US cost guide puts it at $25 to $75 a visit for a standard American house. One New Hampshire watcher charges $75 to $100 a check. Our visits are listed inside monthly plans, from $349 a month for a visit every two weeks. The per-visit number only means something once you know how many visits your insurer wants.

Our home watch service around southern Georgian Bay is listed by the month. This post shows the per-visit rates you'll find, what one visit has to pay for, and how to turn any quote into a number you can compare.

The per-visit rates you'll find, and where they come from

Why would one visit cost $100 when another costs $50? Look at the right-hand column. Twenty minutes is a walk past the thermostat. Forty minutes plus a written report is an inspection. The ThePricer home watch cost guide puts it plainly: each visit involves travel, access, examination, documentation, and communication.

So the rate tracks the clock on site and the report you get after. It doesn't track the brand on the truck.

What one visit pays for on a January drive

Take a chalet up a side road above Thornbury in January. That is the kind of laneway our cottage care Thornbury crew drives in January, under the escarpment. The laneway has drifted since Sunday. Who digs out before the visit even starts? Someone has to.

• The drive. Travel is the first item on that list. A rural laneway in a snow week takes longer than a condo in town.
• Access. A key, a lock code, a door that has frozen shut.
• The walk. Inside and out, on the same checklist, with the heat reading written down.
• The report. Dated photos of each point. Our post on what a home watch report includes covers how to read one.
• The call. If something is wrong, somebody phones you.

Which of the five does your quote include? Ask before you sign. A text that says "all good" is not a record you would hand an adjuster in March.

Your insurer sets the visit count, not you

What does the per-visit number hide? You don't choose how many visits you need. Your vacancy clause does.

Take two rows from the insurer table on our ChaletGuard page. Wawanesa: check every 3 days, or a 24/7 monitored alarm. Portage Mutual: daily checks, or a 24/7 monitored alarm. The wording varies by insurer, so read yours.

Now do the count for January under a check every three days. That is ten or eleven visits in a 31-day month. Ten drives up the laneway. Ten reports. On a per-visit plan, ten invoices. Under daily checks, it is 31 of each.

Multiply your quoted rate by that count before you compare anything. Is a cheap visit times ten still a cheap month? Do the sum.

Does a monitored alarm replace the visits? On those two rows, the insurer lists it as the other option. Whether your policy accepts it is for your broker to answer. We are not insurance advisors. What we can hand over is the continuous temperature record and the dated photo reports. Our guide on how often to check a cottage in winter for insurance goes through the clause itself.

Tuesday at 2 a.m., between two visits

The last visit was Sunday afternoon. Everything was fine. The next one is Wednesday.

Tuesday, 2 a.m., the power drops in a storm. The furnace stops. Nobody is there. In a Georgian Bay winter, pipes can freeze in under 6 hours without heat.

Wednesday's visit finds it. The report is excellent. It's also a report of the damage.

Same night, with a sensor. The room temperature falls to 5°C and the freeze alert fires. You get the notification, and we call you within 15 minutes. A Sunday visit can't see Tuesday at 2 a.m.

In our judgment, that is the case for pairing visits with sensors. The hours between visits are where the damage happens.

How our monthly plans read against a per-visit rate

Prices are in Canadian dollars, and HST of 13% applies on top. These are the plans from the cottage care pricing page.

Commit to any plan for 12 months and the $599 installation fee is waived. Divide a plan by its visits if you want a per-visit figure. It'll look high next to the American rates. Is it the same purchase? No. The monitoring runs 24/7, and Watch + Care adds snow clearing on walkways, deck and steps, plus trades coordination.

Guest coordination is priced per visit, at $75 a visit on the other plans. It is a key handoff and a quick check before friends arrive. It isn't home watch, and we wouldn't sell it as home watch.

Do you need visits at all? If your clause asks only for heat or a monitored alarm, Watch might cover it. Ask your broker first. We would rather sell you Watch than sell you visits your policy never asked for.

Five questions before you compare two quotes

Get these answered in writing. Then the per-visit numbers line up.

• How long on site? Twenty minutes and forty minutes are different jobs.
• What does the report hold? The time, the heat reading, a photo per checklist line.
• What costs extra? ThePricer lists emergency visits, storm preparation and contractor access as often charged separately.
• How many visits in January? Use your clause, not the brochure.
• Who calls the trades? If it's you, count those calls as part of the cost.

What does a storm week cost you in calls? One visit invoice, one emergency-visit invoice, one plumber you found yourself, one snow contractor. Four invoices for one storm week. Or one number and one invoice.

Read your vacancy clause tonight. Ask your broker what it needs. Then look at the cottage monitoring system that covers the nights between visits, and the plans above. If you are on the edge of the map, call and ask: (437) 595-6275.