Vacation Home Checks
Handis vacation home checks are weekly or biweekly walkthroughs of a second home in the Pacific Northwest — Hood Canal cabin, Lake Chelan place, Cle Elum cottage, Crystal Mountain ski chalet, San Juan Island house — from $900 a year for biweekly, $1,800 for weekly, $2,400 for weekly with front-of-line storm response. The same vetted handyman walks the exterior, walks the interior, eyes every fixture that holds water, brings in the mail, takes a dated set of photos, and emails the report the same day. A second home fails quietly between weekends — the toilet that started running on a Tuesday in November overflows the wax ring by March; the downspout the wind knocked loose erodes the foundation bed all winter. The walkthrough catches it on Tuesday.
Service
What Does Vacation Home Checks Include?
Vacation home checks is the residential walkthrough service for second homes in the Pacific Northwest — the cabin you use six weekends a year, the ski place that opens in December and closes in April, the lake house that sits empty November through April. Each visit is an actual walk through the actual house — exterior, interior, plumbing visual, mail, thermostat, smoke detector, post-storm response when the weather kicks up. Photo report lands the same day. From $900 a year for biweekly.
Exterior Walk
Full perimeter — gutters and downspouts (overflow stains, sagging brackets, debris piles), roofline visual from the ground (lifted shingles, branch hits, moss creep on the north slope), deck and rail (lifted boards, loose hardware, ice damage), siding (caulk lines, woodpecker holes, mossy seams), and a perimeter for any forced-entry indicators (broken window seal, pried frame, footprints in the flower bed). On waterfront and woodland properties — bulkhead visual, dock hardware, fallen tree assessment. About 20 to 30 minutes depending on lot size.
Interior Walk
Every room — kitchen, every bath, every bedroom, basement, attic access. Lights tested in each room. Refrigerator hum confirmed. Visible signs of moisture (stains on ceilings, walls, floors), pest indicators (droppings, chew marks, web buildup that says nobody is around), HVAC vent dust, and the slow obvious stuff — a thermostat reading that drifted, a smoke detector flashing low-battery, a door that did not close all the way and swung in the wind. About 15 to 25 minutes for a standard residential floorplan.
Plumbing Visual
The single most important part of the walkthrough. Under every kitchen and bath sink (we lay a hand on the supply lines and the trap), water heater pan (any standing water means the tank is starting to fail), washer hookups (a slow drip on a rubber washer hose turns into a flood by spring), every toilet base (the slow weep at the wax ring is the quiet killer), and the visible main shutoff. The point is to catch the slow leak in the second week of November, not the slab leak in the first week of April.
Mail, Packages, and Curb Appeal
Mail collected from the box and held inside or forwarded per your standing instructions. Packages on the porch brought in. Newspapers (where still delivered) collected. Trash and recycling bins pulled in if pickup happened. The point is no curb-appeal signals that say nobody is home — the package on the porch tells a passerby the owners are gone.
Storm Response
Weekly programs include a post-storm visit within 24 hours of a National Weather Service alert that hits the property's ZIP — windstorm, atmospheric river, winter weather advisory, ice event. Common finds — branch on the roof, downed gutter section, flooded crawl space, power-out check on the freezer, downed limb across the driveway. Biweekly programs can add storm response per visit at member rates.
Mid-Stay Open-Up and Close-Down (Premium Program)
For the weekly-plus-priority program — we open the house the day before your arrival (heat to comfort, fridge running, towels dry, water on if you winterize between visits), and close it the day after you leave (thermostat back to away-mode, fridge to vacation setting, mail forwarded, lights set to away-mode timers). Saves the first afternoon and the last evening of every trip.
How Vacation Home Checks Works
Five steps every Handis vacation home check runs through — exterior perimeter walk, interior room-by-room, plumbing visual under every fixture, mail and package retrieval with curb-appeal reset, and a dated same-day photo report.
Exterior Perimeter Walk
Tech walks the full perimeter — gutters, downspouts, roofline visual, deck and rails, siding, doors, and windows. On waterfront properties, the bulkhead and dock hardware. Photos taken of any anomaly (lifted shingle, sagging gutter bracket, branch on the roof, broken window seal).
Interior Room-by-Room
Every room walked. Lights tested. Refrigerator hum confirmed. Thermostat and smoke-detector indicator checked. Visible moisture, pest indicators, and door-and-window seal looked over. Basement and attic access opened.
Plumbing Visual Under Every Fixture
Under every sink (kitchen and baths), water heater pan, washer hookups, every toilet base. A hand laid on supply lines and traps to feel for damp. The slow leak that starts in November is the slow leak we catch in the second week, not the slab leak found in April.
Mail, Packages, Bins, Curb-Appeal Reset
Mail collected and held or forwarded per standing instructions. Packages brought in. Trash and recycling bins pulled back from the curb after pickup days. The house looks lived-in from the street; no signals to passersby that the owners are gone.
Same-Day Photo Report
A PDF (or shared link) lands in the owner's inbox the same evening — dated exterior photos, interior plumbing visual, any anomalies flagged, mail volume, and the tech's one-paragraph summary. Storm-response visits add a post-storm exterior walk and damage assessment within 24 hours of the alert clearing.
Vacation Home Checks Pricing
Pricing depends on the cadence, property size, and travel distance from the Seattle metro. Properties on the I-90 corridor (North Bend, Snoqualmie, Cle Elum), Hood Canal, Whidbey, the San Juans, and Crystal Mountain carry a travel premium quoted before the program starts. Storm-response visits are included in the weekly programs and billed per visit on biweekly. Request a free estimate for an accurate quote.
Tell us where the vacation home is and how often nobody is there — we will pick the cadence and quote the year.
Why Second-Home Owners Book Handis for Vacation Checks
Vacation properties fail in a few specific ways and almost all of them are quiet. A toilet that starts running in November will overflow the wax ring by March. A downspout the wind knocked loose in October will erode the foundation bed all winter. A branch that punctured the roof on a Tuesday in January will let water into the attic insulation for six weeks before anyone sees the stain on the bedroom ceiling. A package on the porch tells anyone driving by that nobody is home for a while. The walkthrough's whole job is to find these on Tuesday week two, not by accident on a holiday weekend in April. The same handyman every visit, real photos with date stamps, and a real opinion in the report — that is the difference.
A real interior walk every visit
Some property-watch services drive by, photograph the front door, email a PDF, and call it an inspection. Ours opens the door (or the lockbox), walks every room, opens every sink cabinet, lays a hand on every supply line. The slow leak is the entire reason for the visit.
Same handyman, notes that carry forward
The tech who walked the cabin last week walks it this week. The downspout flagged in October gets a follow-up photo from the same angle in November. The toilet that ran briefly gets a thirty-second listen on the next visit. Continuity beats the rotating-vendor model most property-watch companies deliver.
Storm response within 24 hours of the alert
Weekly programs include a post-storm visit within 24 hours of any National Weather Service alert that hits the property's ZIP. We track the alerts so you do not have to call us after every windstorm — the visit just happens, the photos land that evening, and any damage gets flagged for the next regular walk or escalated to a contractor if it cannot wait.
Open-up and close-down on the premium program
For owners on the weekly-plus-premium program — the house is warm and the fridge is running when you arrive, and the house is closed correctly when you leave. No first-afternoon thermostat fight, no last-evening shutdown checklist. Most owners say the open-up alone justifies the program.
Handyman scope, contractor handoff for licensed trades
When the visit turns up something we cannot fix — gas appliance issue, hardwired electrical fault, in-wall plumbing supply or drain leak, structural roof failure — we name it in the report, recommend a Washington L&I-licensed contractor, and coordinate access. We do not pretend a handyman is a plumber. We do come back to do the finish work after the contractor's rough-in.
Insured, background-checked, key-and-code chain of custody
Every Handis tech carries liability insurance and has cleared a background screening. Keys are held in a locked vehicle safe between visits and never duplicated. Smart-lock codes are single-use per visit (works with Yale, Schlage Encode, August, and most major brands). Alarm codes are entered on arrival, re-armed on exit, logged in the visit report. The chain of custody is on paper and in the visit log.
Estimate
Tell us where the vacation home is (Hood Canal, Lake Chelan, Cle Elum, Whidbey, San Juans, Crystal Mountain), the rough size and age, the cadence you want (weekly or biweekly), how access works (lockbox, key, smart lock), and any specifics — second-story plumbing, sump pump, well system, alarm code procedure. We send a clear annual estimate.
Customer Reviews
Vacation home checks reviews from real Handis customers across the Pacific Northwest.
Cabin on Hood Canal, biweekly walkthrough for two years now. The tech caught a slow leak under the kitchen sink in February — a hairline crack in a supply line connector — and had a plumber out the next day. Without those visits the floor would have come up by spring.
Ski place at Crystal Mountain, weekly visits through the season. February storm dropped two feet of snow on the deck. The tech cleared the load before it pulled the rail off and sent photos with the deck swept clean. The next morning we drove up, deck was fine, beer was cold in the fridge.
Lake Chelan house, weekly with open-up and close-down. We arrive on Friday nights — house is at 68, fridge is humming, water is on, towels are dry. We leave Sunday — by Monday the tech has been through, thermostat back to away, fridge on vacation setting, mail forwarded. No more dragging the cooler out on day-one.
San Juan Island house, biweekly. Ferry schedules made finding any service hard. Handis runs a Friday route with three other San Juan properties and got us on it. Two years of clean photo reports, one caught roof leak after a December storm, one bear-in-trash event we would never have known about until smell got us.
Cle Elum cottage we use about ten weekends a year. The first thing I do every Monday after a weekend up there is check the inbox for the Handis report. The tech walked it Tuesday, sent the photos, flagged a roof shingle that lifted in the wind. Booked a roofer the next week. No drama.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Handis vacation home checks.