How to Protect Your Vacation Rental This Off-Season
Maintaining a vacation rental property during the off-season can be challenging. You want to ensure that your property is secure, well-maintained, and ready for guests to start booking again next year, but you might not live nearby or be able to easily access the property during the winter.
We’ve put together a few practical solutions to help you protect your vacation rental property this offseason with minimal cost and effort.
Conduct a Maintenance Check
After the last guest of the season leaves, give your home a thorough inspection to make sure it’s ready for the winter and conduct some basic winterizing:
- Check the doors and windows to ensure that they’re well-sealed and locked securely.
- Turn off all your appliances and electronics to make sure they’re not wasting energy while the property is empty.
- If your property is equipped with a gas line and you don’t need it for the furnace, turn it off.
- Drain the water by turning off the main water supply, then opening every faucet and shower in the property. Flush toilets to ensure that the tanks and bowls are as empty as possible.
- Clean your gutters. Clogged gutters can overflow, dumping water near the foundation and causing damage. Ensure they’re free of leaves and can drain properly.
The more thorough you are in preparing your property before the off-season starts, the less you’ll have to check on it during the winter.
Use RemoteLock to Manage Access
Whether you’re checking on the property periodically yourself or entrusting that job to a property manager, you want to be able to keep track of who’s coming and going. With RemoteLock you can manage access and assign unique smart lock entry codes so you know who opened which door and when at any of your properties.
When integrated with a property management system of your choice, RemoteLock can also automatically revoke access when a guest’s stay ends, so you don’t need to worry about guests returning and accessing the property while no one’s there.
You can even schedule access codes for maintenance staff, cleaners, and other contractors to automatically expire. RemoteLock gives you the peace of mind of knowing that no one has access to the property while it’s unoccupied.
Protect Your Property With Smart Thermostat Control
If the temperature drops too low in your property, a frozen pipe can cause thousands of dollars in damage. If the property gets too hot, appliances like refrigerators can be damaged by overheating. RemoteLock’s integration with Honeywell Home thermostats with Resideo can help you avoid these concerns.
Smart thermostats allow you to keep the temperature at a safe range even when the property is unoccupied — experts recommend you keep the temperature above 50° to avoid freezing and below 80° to avoid appliance damage.
And with RemoteLock integration, you can link your Honeywell thermostats in units with RemoteLock-connected smart locks to a single dashboard and change the temperature automatically when guests arrive or leave.
Maintain the Property’s Exterior
One of the surest signs for potential intruders that a property is unoccupied is an exterior that’s not maintained. During the off-season, make sure that someone is assigned to regularly mow the lawn, remove leaves, and shovel snow from the property — in some locations, keeping the sidewalks clear might be not just recommended but legally required — in order to prevent damage, keep access paths clear, and give the property the appearance of being occupied.
Install Cameras and Lighting
Motion-activated exterior cameras and lighting are relatively inexpensive, and they’re a great way to keep an eye on your property when you’re not there to check in on it. Ensuring that pathways, entry points, and surrounding areas are well-lit can give the impression that the property is occupied and being monitored.
As an added bonus, if you do have occasional guests during the off-season, automatic lights on the exterior provide a much more welcoming first impression than a completely dark property.
Talk to RemoteLock to Get Started
Protecting your vacation rental during the off-season takes thoughtful planning and smart technology. By conducting regular maintenance checks, securing all entry points, and leveraging tools like RemoteLock for remote access and thermostat control, you can ensure your property stays secure, well-maintained, and ready to welcome guests at any time.
Read more about how RemoteLock can make managing your vacation rental easier and more efficient.
RemoteLock
Universal Access Control
We provide cloud-based, access control software that empowers those in the multifamily, vacation rental, commercial and related industries to remotely manage and control access to any space from anywhere in the world.
