Home Homeowner Services Caretaking
Caretaking
Someone walks through your house every week, whether you are in it or not.
What This Is
A Service in Its Own Right
Caretaking is not the maintenance half of a rental programme. A significant number of the homes we look after are never let to anyone — the owners are here a few weeks a year, or they are here full time and simply want the house run properly. Either way the work is the same, and it has its own scope, its own schedule and its own reporting.
What it protects against is specific to this valley. Houses at six thousand feet, empty through a winter that swings forty degrees in a day, with heavy snow loads on the roof, lines that freeze if a furnace stumbles, runoff in the spring, wildlife looking for a way in, and mechanical systems ageing in places a contractor will not reach quickly. Almost everything that becomes expensive here is inexpensive if it is found in the first week.
So the centre of this service is not a phone number. It is somebody physically in your house, every week, with a checklist written for that house.
The Centre of It
The Weekly Inspection
Roughly ninety minutes, longer in a larger house. Interior and exterior, on a checklist built for your property, photographed and recorded every time. This is what is actually looked at.
01
Condition & Temperature
A full interior and exterior walkthrough with temperatures recorded at arrival. In a Jackson Hole winter the arrival temperature is the single most diagnostic number in the report — it tells us whether the heating has been doing its job all week, not just at the moment we walked in.
02
Mechanical, Visually
Accessible mechanical systems checked for operation: temperature, warning messages and alerts, anything running that should not be or silent when it should not be. These are visual operational checks — where they suggest a professional is needed, we say so and arrange it.
03
Plumbing & Moisture
Fixtures run, traps checked, and a hunt for visible leaks and unusual moisture. Water is what ruins houses here, and it usually announces itself quietly for a week or two before it does any real damage.
04
Water Features
Hot tubs and pools checked as part of the routine visit — levels, temperature, covers, and whether anything has iced where it should not.
05
Security & Access
Accessible doors, windows and locks, alarm and system alerts, and key management. Anything unusual is documented and reported the same day rather than noted for next week.
06
Your Own Additions
The checklist is not a generic form. Whatever you want looked at each week goes on it — a particular valve, a crawlspace, a well house, a piece of art, the shed at the back of the lot.
The Annual Cycle
What Happens, and When
Winter December – March
The Season That Justifies the Service
Roof snow loads monitored and cleared before they reach a weight that matters. Cold-weather checks on top of the routine visit when temperatures drop hard. Heat tape, vents and ice dams watched. This is the season when an empty house goes wrong fastest, and when a week between visits is the difference between a call and a claim.
Spring April – May
Runoff and Reopening
Snowmelt is the second water risk of the year — grading, drainage, window wells and crawlspaces all get attention. Irrigation is brought back up, exterior systems are recommissioned, and the winter’s damage is found and quoted while contractors still have availability.
Summer June – September
The Window for Real Work
The months when major projects can actually happen, so this is when we schedule them. Grounds and irrigation run, exteriors get looked at properly, and anything that needs a contractor for more than a morning goes in now rather than in October.
Autumn October – November
Getting Ahead of the Freeze
Furnace servicing before the first hard freeze, not after it. Irrigation blown out before ground temperatures drop. Gutters cleared, exterior water shut down and drained, and the house put into a state where a cold snap in November is uneventful.
Exactly What Is Covered
In the Monthly Fee, or Billed Separately
The monthly caretaking fee buys routine oversight, documentation and on-call availability. Work — actual labour, vendor invoices, professional servicing, on-site emergency response — is billed on top of it. We would rather that line be obvious here than discovered on a statement.
Invoicing is milestone-based: no upfront deposits and no retainer held against future work. Invoices go out monthly, in arrears, for work already completed.
In the Monthly Fee
- Weekly caretaking inspection
- Your customised inspection checklist
- Visual HVAC and plumbing checks
- Security, access and utility oversight
- Key management
- Photo-documented property reporting
- Extreme weather checks
- Hot tub and pool routine checks
- Owner arrival and departure preparation
- Owner guest check-in and check-out coordination
- 3D Matterport imaging of the property
- After-hours on-call availability
Billed Separately
- Labour beyond the routine inspection
- Professional HVAC and plumbing service, including winterization
- Vendor invoices, with a coordination fee
- Vendor coordination and project oversight time
- On-site emergency response, labour and materials
- Snow removal — vendor charges and our own crew
- Landscaping, irrigation work, materials and tree care
- Bill pay service, if you want it
- Deep cleans, window cleaning and firewood stocking
Being Straight About It
What Caretaking Does Not Cover
Every management company in this valley describes itself as comprehensive. Here is where our scope actually stops — worth reading, because a clear boundary is more useful to you than an implied competence.
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We are not a licensed trade
LPJH does not perform licensed electrical, plumbing or HVAC repair. That work goes to qualified, insured contractors. What we do is hold those relationships, arrange access, oversee the work, document it and help you review the invoice — which in February is most of the value.
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We do not handle your insurance claims
We document condition thoroughly, photograph everything and can supply the whole record to your carrier or broker. The claim itself is yours to file. Rental guest damage is different — that we do pursue, through the security deposit and the booking platform.
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We cannot prevent everything
Acts of God and events outside reasonable control are outside our liability, as they are for anyone. What weekly attendance buys is a shorter gap between something starting and somebody noticing.
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Scope can change
We reserve the right to modify the scope of services on thirty days’ written notice. In practice that clause exists for things like a property changing hands or a system being replaced, and you will hear about it from a person first.
What You Receive
You Will Always Know the State of Your House
How much of it reaches you is your call. Some owners read every weekly report; others want to hear from us only when something needs a decision. Both are normal, and neither changes the work.
A Report Every Week
Date, arrival temperature, checklist items completed, photographs, observations and anything recommended for follow-up. Filed whether or not you read it.
Monthly Financial Summary
Vendor invoices, maintenance costs, caretaking charges and utilities, organised into one document rather than arriving as a pile of paperwork.
The Owner Portal
Inspection reports, photographs, maintenance documentation, statements and the full history, available whenever you want them. You also enter your own stays and your guests’ there, so we know when the house needs to be ready.
A Consistent Team
The same caretaker walking the house and the same coordinator answering the phone. Familiarity with a property is the part that cannot be systematised.
At Two in the Morning
What Actually Happens
Someone answers
The after-hours line reaches a person, not a queue. Burst lines, heating failures, roof damage, security alerts, extreme weather.
We protect the house first
We assess urgency and take reasonable steps to limit damage. Where immediate action is necessary we will bring in a qualified vendor before we have your approval — a burst line at midnight does not wait for a time zone.
You hear from us straight away
Not the next morning. What happened, what we did, what it looks like, and what needs deciding.
It is documented
Condition photographed, actions logged, invoices attached. Anything that can wait for your decision waits for it.
Start Here
Tell Us About the House
Caretaking is quoted from the property, so this starts with a walkthrough. A few details first — how often you are here, whether the house is ever let, and anything about it that already worries you.
If You Also Want to Rent It
Caretaking and rental management run through the same team, and a house that is already maintained is cheaper to keep rental-ready. The combined programme reflects that.