How much do home watch services cost in Palm Beach County?

Home watch in Palm Beach County is normally sold as a monthly retainer priced per visit, and the figure is set by inspection cadence, how long a full walk of the property takes, waterfront exposure, and whether the home is furnished. We quote after walking the house, because a per-square-foot table produces the wrong number on almost every waterfront estate. Call 561-351-6323 and describe the property and we will give you a real range on the phone.

Why won't you publish a flat price list?

Because a published table would have to be either high enough to cover the most demanding property on our roster or low enough that we would have to cut corners on it. Two homes on the same street with the same square footage can differ by an hour of work per visit. We would rather walk your house once and price it honestly than quote a number we would need to renegotiate.

Is the cheapest home watch service a false economy?

Usually. The two things that get cut to reach a low price are time on site and documentation. A fifteen-minute drive-by with no photo report is not an inspection, and it will not satisfy an insurer asking you to prove the dwelling was being monitored. The gap between a thorough plan and a cheap one is small; the gap between a documented water event and an undocumented one is six figures.

Does home watch save money overall?

For a home that sits empty for months, yes — and the arithmetic is not subtle. A failed A/C condensate line found on a weekly visit is a service call. The same failure found in April, after four months of unnoticed water, is remediation, flooring, cabinetry, drywall, and a mold protocol. Documented inspections are also what keeps water-damage coverage intact on many high-value Florida policies.

What is included in the monthly fee?

The scheduled interior and exterior inspection, the timestamped photo report filed the same day, storm-season readiness checks, mail and package handling, vehicle starts, running water and traps, and access management for approved vendors. Repairs, shuttering, and preparation days are separate and never authorized without you.

How does home watch pricing compare to estate management?

Home watch is the inspection layer and is the lower of the two. Estate management includes those inspections and adds the vendor bench, the preventive maintenance calendar, arrival and departure preparation, renovation oversight, and a single accountable point of contact for the household. Owners typically start with home watch and move up when they get tired of coordinating trades from another state.

Pricing

What Home Watch Costs in Palm Beach County

By Nick Martinsen, Owner · Updated August 2026

Home watch cost in Palm Beach County is set by four things: how often somebody opens the door, how long a full walk of the property actually takes, how much salt air the house is exposed to, and how thoroughly each visit is documented. It is normally sold as a monthly retainer priced per visit.

We do not publish a rate card, and this page explains why — along with everything that moves the number, so you can read any quote you receive, ours or anyone else's, and know whether it is honest. If you would rather just talk it through, call 561-351-6323 and describe the house.

Why a square-footage table gets it wrong

Take two 5,000-square-foot homes a block apart in Juno Beach. One is inland, one air handler, no pool, unfurnished for the summer. The other is on the Intracoastal with a dock and lift, four zones, a whole-house generator, a summer kitchen, a wine room, and a house full of furniture and art that has to be held at a specific humidity.

A per-square-foot price treats those as the same job. They are not the same job — one is a twenty-minute walk and one is an hour. Companies that price off area either overcharge the simple house or rush the complicated one, and the complicated one is precisely where the six-figure losses happen.

So we walk the property first. It costs you nothing, it takes about forty minutes, and it produces a plan and a price that match the actual house.

Cost drivers

The six things that set the number.

In rough order of impact on what you will pay each month.

How often somebody opens the door: Cadence is the single largest line in any home watch quote. Every 14 days is the minimum most Florida carriers will accept on an unoccupied dwelling; every 7 days is standard for waterfront, oceanfront, and any home sitting empty through hurricane season. Doubling the visits roughly doubles the labor, and it is almost always the right money to spend.
How long a single walk actually takes: Not square footage — systems. A 4,000 sq ft house with one air handler, one water heater, and no pool walks faster than a 4,000 sq ft house with four zones, a summer kitchen, a dock, a generator, an elevator, and a wine room. Pricing off a square-footage table is how a company ends up rushing the properties that need the most time.
Waterfront and salt-air exposure: Intracoastal and oceanfront homes carry corrosion checks that inland homes do not: rail and fastener condition, exterior A/C coils, dock hardware, lift function, screen and cage integrity, impact glass seals. That work adds time on every visit, not once a season.
Whether the home is furnished and lived in seasonally: A fully furnished seasonal residence needs trap-running, humidity management, refrigerator and ice-maker checks, and interior humidity held in a range that protects millwork, art, and cabinetry. A stripped, unfurnished house needs far less.
How much coordination sits on top of the inspection: Home watch is inspection and reporting. The moment you want the vendors scheduled, the maintenance calendar run, arrivals prepared, and one person accountable for the household, you are buying estate management — a different and larger scope.
What has to be documented: Timestamped photographs of every area walked, written exceptions, and a filed history in your portal is the standard we hold. It is also the record a carrier or warranty administrator asks for at claim time. A cheaper provider is usually cheaper because that record does not exist.

Structure

How home watch is billed.

What the agreement normally looks like once the scope is set.

Monthly retainer, priced per visit: The common structure in Palm Beach County and the one we use: an agreed number of inspections per month at an agreed scope, billed monthly. Predictable for you, and it means nobody is deciding whether a visit is worth making.
Seasonal term: Many owners contract for the months they are north — commonly May through October — and step down to a lighter cadence while they are in residence.
Additional services, quoted separately: Storm shuttering and de-shuttering, arrival and departure preparation, contractor access days, and supervised repair visits sit outside the standing inspection and are quoted as they arise, always with your approval first.

The real comparison

Measure the fee against the failure it prevents.

A condensate line clogs in June. Found on a weekly visit, it is a service call and a dry pan. Found in October, it is saturated drywall, ruined cabinetry, cupped flooring, and a mold remediation protocol — and an insurer asking what evidence you have that the dwelling was being monitored.

That is the comparison that matters. The difference between a thorough home watch plan and a cheap one is a modest monthly figure. The difference between a documented water event and an undocumented one is the deductible, the claim, and sometimes the coverage.

If you want the full picture of what an inspection covers, read what home watch actually is — or how to evaluate the companies quoting you. Owners pricing a larger scope than inspection should look at our estate management service. Our starting figures for every tier — Home Watch from $750/month, Estate Care from $2,000/month, Private Estate Management from $5,000/month — are published on our pricing page.

Questions

Home watch cost, answered.

How much do home watch services cost in Palm Beach County?: Home watch in Palm Beach County is normally sold as a monthly retainer priced per visit, and the figure is set by inspection cadence, how long a full walk of the property takes, waterfront exposure, and whether the home is furnished. We quote after walking the house, because a per-square-foot table produces the wrong number on almost every waterfront estate. Call 561-351-6323 and describe the property and we will give you a real range on the phone.
Why won't you publish a flat price list?: Because a published table would have to be either high enough to cover the most demanding property on our roster or low enough that we would have to cut corners on it. Two homes on the same street with the same square footage can differ by an hour of work per visit. We would rather walk your house once and price it honestly than quote a number we would need to renegotiate.
Is the cheapest home watch service a false economy?: Usually. The two things that get cut to reach a low price are time on site and documentation. A fifteen-minute drive-by with no photo report is not an inspection, and it will not satisfy an insurer asking you to prove the dwelling was being monitored. The gap between a thorough plan and a cheap one is small; the gap between a documented water event and an undocumented one is six figures.
Does home watch save money overall?: For a home that sits empty for months, yes — and the arithmetic is not subtle. A failed A/C condensate line found on a weekly visit is a service call. The same failure found in April, after four months of unnoticed water, is remediation, flooring, cabinetry, drywall, and a mold protocol. Documented inspections are also what keeps water-damage coverage intact on many high-value Florida policies.
What is included in the monthly fee?: The scheduled interior and exterior inspection, the timestamped photo report filed the same day, storm-season readiness checks, mail and package handling, vehicle starts, running water and traps, and access management for approved vendors. Repairs, shuttering, and preparation days are separate and never authorized without you.
How does home watch pricing compare to estate management?: Home watch is the inspection layer and is the lower of the two. Estate management includes those inspections and adds the vendor bench, the preventive maintenance calendar, arrival and departure preparation, renovation oversight, and a single accountable point of contact for the household. Owners typically start with home watch and move up when they get tired of coordinating trades from another state.

Before you hire

What is home watch?
The plain definition: a scheduled inspection of an empty home, with a photo report after every visit.
Choosing a home watch provider
What separates an accountable firm from a neighbor with a key and good intentions.
Selecting an estate manager
The credentials and habits that matter when one person speaks for the house.
Owner questions, answered
The answers we give most often about cadence, coverage, insurance, and cancellation.

Get a number

Tell us about the house and we will price it.

A short walk of the property, an honest cadence recommendation, and a monthly figure you can hold us to. No obligation and no pressure.

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