The risk to a seasonal home is not the season you are in it.
A house you occupy is a house with someone in it to notice things. A running toilet gets heard. A soft spot in the floor gets felt. A smell gets investigated on the day it appears rather than in November.
The seasonal home loses all of that, and the consequence shows up in a predictable way: the most common serious claim on a Florida second home is water that failed in March and was discovered in October. By then it is not a water claim at all. It is deterioration, mold, and an argument.
Everything below follows from that.
Vacant and unoccupied are not the same word
Policies distinguish between them and the distinction matters.
Unoccupied generally means nobody is living there but the house is still furnished and set up to be lived in — the normal state of a snowbird property in July.
Vacant generally means the contents are gone too, which describes a house between owners, after an estate, or during a gut renovation.
Both trigger provisions once the period passes a threshold, and the threshold is shorter than most owners expect. What gets excluded during that period typically includes vandalism, theft, glass breakage, and often water damage — which is precisely the coverage a seasonal owner needs most.
The fix is not complicated. Tell your carrier the house is seasonal and have the policy written for that. A property insured as an owner-occupied primary residence and used as a half-year home is misdescribed, and misdescription is one of the few things that lets a carrier walk away from a claim entirely.
The form is probably different
A seasonal or secondary home frequently cannot sit on the same standard homeowners form a carrier would write for your primary residence. Depending on the carrier and the property, the answer may be a secondary home program, a dwelling fire form, or a specialty placement.
That is not a downgrade, it is a different product built for a different pattern of use. What matters is that somebody chose it deliberately rather than the property being written as something it is not.
If the home is rented at all, even occasionally, that changes the analysis completely, and a homeowners policy is generally the wrong answer. That is covered on our vacation rental insurance page.
Water is the loss, and the clock is the problem
Most forms exclude continuous or repeated seepage over a period of time, which means a slow failure that ran unnoticed for months is outside the policy even where a sudden burst would have been covered.
This is the structural problem with an empty house. The same failure that produces a manageable claim in an occupied home produces an uncovered one in a seasonal home, purely because of how long it went unseen.
Three things change the odds materially.
Shut the water off at the main when you leave. This is the single most effective thing an absent owner can do and it costs nothing. Some carriers require it, and some will credit you for it.
Install an automatic shutoff device. These detect abnormal flow and close the valve, and they are the one product that stops the loss rather than limiting it. Several carriers offer a credit.
Replace the supply lines and the water heater before they fail. Braided stainless lines are inexpensive, and a water heater past its life is a known quantity waiting for a date.
More on how water claims are evaluated is in does homeowners insurance cover water damage in Florida.
Leave the air conditioning running
A closed Florida house with the system off, or set to a temperature that keeps it from running, grows mold without any leak at all.
Set the thermostat so the system cycles and actually removes humidity rather than just holding a high temperature. Have the condensate line cleared before you leave. Mold that arrives this way has no covered water event behind it, which means it is maintenance and nobody pays for it but you. There is more on that in does homeowners insurance cover mold in Florida.
Someone has to be able to act during hurricane season
Season starts on the first of June. A great many seasonal owners leave in April.
That gap is the real problem, because storm preparation is physical. Shutters have to be closed by somebody. Outdoor furniture has to come in. A generator has to be started. Damage has to be tarped in the days after, before the next rain gets into the opening.
Arrange that before you leave, not when a system forms. Know who has keys and codes, whether they can actually get to the house, and what you are asking them to do. Some policies also require reasonable steps to protect the property after a loss, which is difficult to satisfy from another state.
And photograph the house on the way out every year. It is the cheapest evidence you will ever collect.
Somebody should be checking on it
Many carriers now expect a seasonal property to be looked at periodically by somebody, and some write a required interval into the policy.
Whether or not yours does, have a person walk through at a sensible interval and keep a simple record of when. Neighbors, a property manager, or a paid checking service all work. What matters is that a failure gets found in weeks rather than in months, which is exactly the difference between a covered claim and an excluded one.
While you are arranging it, remember that people come to the property whether you are there or not — landscapers, pool service, contractors. Your liability coverage is doing work in your absence, and it should be sized for that rather than left at whatever came standard.
Do not advertise that nobody is home
Uncollected mail, an overflowing recycling bin, a dark house, and an overgrown yard tell everyone on the street that the property is empty.
Hold the mail, keep the landscaping on a schedule, put some lighting on timers, and leave a vehicle in the driveway if you can. Vandalism and theft are the two perils vacancy provisions are quickest to exclude, which makes prevention the only real coverage you have.
Before you leave for the season
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Confirm the carrier knows the home is seasonal, and that the policy is written for that use
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Ask what the vacancy or unoccupancy provision says, and at how many days it applies
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Shut off the water at the main, or install an automatic shutoff device
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Set the thermostat to control humidity, and clear the condensate line
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Arrange who prepares the house for a storm, with keys, codes, and access
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Arrange who checks on the property, and keep a record
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Photograph the house, inside and out, on the way out
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Hold the mail and keep the yard maintained
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Check your liability limit against the people who come to the property in your absence
Second homes are most of what we do
Atlantis Insurance works with homeowners across the Treasure Coast — Stuart, Palm City, Jensen Beach, Hobe Sound, Port St. Lucie, Fort Pierce, and Vero Beach — along with Jupiter and Palm Beach County, and on Florida’s west coast in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Port Charlotte, and New Port Richey.
A large share of the properties on this coast are occupied part of the year, and they are frequently insured as though they were occupied all of it. Send us the declarations page and tell us how the house is actually used, and we will tell you whether the policy matches.
Atlantis Insurance Inc 850 NW Federal Highway, Suite 129 Stuart, FL 34994 561-983-4333
General information only, not legal advice. Policy forms, vacancy provisions, and carrier requirements vary and change over time; refer to your own policy before relying on any of the above.
