The Hamptons · The North Fork · Manhattan
You should never have to wonder about the house.
Property management and estate care for seasonal and primary residences. A written record of every visit, one person accountable for the whole of it, and an owner who is never the last to know.
We are not a rental manager. We do not list, let, or collect rent — we look after houses their owners keep.
South Fork homes classified by the Census as seasonal — empty for most of the year
of all US homeowners claims are water damage and freezing — the single largest cause after wind
after which NY Insurance Law § 3404 suspends standard fire coverage on an unoccupied building
warned winter storm and damaging-wind events in a typical South Fork off-season
The situation
The failure is never dramatic.
A heating system runs out of fuel during a January cold snap. A supply line splits behind a wall. Water runs for six weeks in an empty house, and because nobody is there, nobody knows. On the East End that discovery is frequently made in May.
The cost of the failure is not the pipe. It is the interval between the failure and the finding.
East End restoration runs 30 to 60 percent above comparable work further west, and the average homeowner spends roughly ninety days out of the house while it is put right.
The average frozen-pipe claim runs above $30,000. The average water claim of any cause runs about $13,954. Nothing about a frozen pipe is inherently more expensive — the difference is how long it ran before anyone noticed.
That gap is the entire argument for this service. An empty house does not fail worse than an occupied one. It fails for longer.
And it is not burglary. The entire South Fork and Shelter Island recorded 48 burglaries in 2024. East Hampton Town Police recorded one.
We do not sell fear of intruders, because the data does not support it. The risk to an empty house here is water, weather, and time — and those are the things we are built to catch.
The distinction
Most caretaking sells you visits. We sell you the record.
Anyone can drive to a house and look at it. What almost nobody in this market produces is the thing that has value after the fact: a dated, photographed, timestamped record of the property’s condition, maintained continuously, and written to a standard that holds up when it matters.
It matters more often than owners expect. When a claim is filed, when a policy is renewed, when a property is sold, when a contractor disputes what was there before — the question is always the same, and it is always evidentiary. The house cannot answer it. The record can.
That record is also the reason the relationship compounds. In the first month we build a house manual: systems, inventory, vendors, access, standards, preferences, the accumulated knowledge that normally lives in one person’s head and leaves when they do.
By the third year it is the most complete description of your property that exists anywhere — and it belongs to you.
The part nobody mentions
Your policy has conditions about an empty house.
New York Insurance Law § 3404 prescribes the standard fire policy for the state. Under its conditions, the insurer is not liable for loss occurring while the building is vacant or unoccupied beyond a period of sixty consecutive days — unless otherwise provided in writing added to the policy.
Read the conjunction. Not vacant and unoccupied. Or. A fully furnished house closed from November to April is unoccupied for well beyond sixty consecutive days. Nearly every seasonal house on the South Fork crosses that line, every winter, and most owners have never been told.
The standard freeze exclusion works the same way. It does not apply, in the policy’s own words, where the owner has used reasonable care to maintain heat in the building. Reasonable care is not a feeling. It is something you either documented or did not.
We handle the written notice to your carrier, and we produce the documentation. That is the work.
Plainly
What we will not tell you.
Most home watch companies in this market will tell you that your insurance carrier requires an inspection every seven to fourteen days.
That is not true. No US carrier — not Chubb, not AIG, not PURE, not Cincinnati, not Berkley One — publishes a required inspection interval for unoccupied homes. The seven-day standard is genuine, but it comes from the United Kingdom’s unoccupied-home insurance market, and it has been imported into American marketing without attribution. The National Home Watch Association makes no such claim either.
We are telling you this at the point in the page where a competitor would be using it to sell you something. We would rather be the firm you can check.
What is true is narrower, verifiable, and more useful: § 3404, the reasonable-care condition on the freeze exclusion, and the vacant-house deductibles that some high-value carriers apply absent written notification. Those are worth your attention. The invented ones are not.
Engagement
One retainer. Three scales.
Every engagement begins with a property assessment and a written house manual. Pricing follows the assessment — property count, scale, staff, and systems — and is discussed directly.
Residence
A single property to roughly 6,000 sq ft, without resident staff.
- Weekly oversight November through April
- Bi-weekly in season
- Written condition report every visit
- Vendor coordination and supervision
- Seasonal opening and closing
Estate
A larger single property, or two properties, with some household staff.
- Everything in Residence
- Household staff supervision
- Budget tracking and invoice review
- Insurance documentation and carrier notice
- Expanded personal-service allowance
Portfolio
Three or more properties, or an estate with resident staff.
- Everything in Estate
- Multi-property coordination
- Full vendor contracting oversight
- Project and improvement advisory
- Family office reporting
Fit
We are not right for every house.
This works when
- The property is empty for a meaningful part of the year
- You are coordinating more vendors than you would like to think about
- You want one person accountable rather than six numbers in a phone
- Discretion matters as much as competence
- You would rather prevent a problem than be told about one
This does not
- You are looking for the lowest monthly figure available
- You need a caretaker living on the property
- You want rental management — we do not arrange lettings or handle rent
- You want a security service — that is a different licensed business and we are not it
- The house is occupied year-round with staff already in place
Questions
What owners actually ask.
What does an estate management service actually do for a seasonal Hamptons home?
Scheduled property visits on a stated cadence with a written, dated, photographed condition report after each one; coordination and supervision of every vendor entering the property; budget tracking and invoice review; seasonal opening and closing including winterization; supervision of household staff; and documentation of the property's condition for insurance purposes. The distinguishing deliverable is the written record, not the visit itself.
Do insurance companies require home watch inspections in New York?
No United States carrier publishes a required inspection interval for unoccupied homes, and claims that insurers require checks every 7 to 14 days are not supported by any carrier document. That standard comes from the United Kingdom's unoccupied-home insurance market. What is true in New York is different and more specific: Insurance Law § 3404 provides that the standard fire policy does not cover loss occurring while a building is vacant or unoccupied beyond sixty consecutive days, unless otherwise provided in writing added to the policy. Separately, the standard homeowners freeze exclusion does not apply where the owner used reasonable care to maintain heat. Both turn on documentation and written notice to the carrier, not on a visit frequency.
How often should an empty Hamptons house be checked in winter?
Established practice among East End operators is weekly during the winter months and bi-weekly in season, with additional visits automatically triggered after any storm, hard freeze, or power outage. The relevant standard of care for an unoccupied home is maintaining a minimum interior temperature of 55°F, or fully draining the plumbing system.
What is the difference between home watch and estate management?
Home watch is a visual inspection of an unoccupied property looking for obvious problems. Estate management covers the governance of the household — vendor contracting and supervision, budget control, staff oversight, standards documentation, and risk and insurance records — in addition to condition monitoring. In the Hamptons market the majority of providers are maintenance-led; comparatively few operate at the governance level.
What are the most common problems in an unoccupied Hamptons house?
Water, weather, and time. Water damage and freezing account for 27.6% of all United States homeowners insurance claims. The characteristic East End failure is a heating system running out of fuel during a winter cold snap, followed by a burst supply line that runs undetected for weeks. Burglary is comparatively rare: the entire South Fork and Shelter Island recorded 48 burglaries in 2024.
The conversation starts with the house.
Every engagement begins with a walkthrough and a written assessment — what is there, what condition it is in, and what it actually requires. That document is yours whether or not we go further.
Begin a conversation