How to choose a home watch company: a homeowner's vetting guide

Home watch is an unregulated industry: no state licenses it, and anyone can put 'home watch' on a business card tomorrow. Plenty of excellent, professional operators work in it — but the burden of telling them apart falls on you, and the stakes are your keys, your alarm codes, and an empty house nobody else is watching. The good news: a professional operator can pass every check below easily, and expects you to ask.

Start with the paper: insurance and bonding

Ask for a certificate of insurance showing current general liability coverage, and ask whether the company is bonded. This is the fastest professional/amateur filter in the industry: a real business produces the certificate without hesitation; an amateur changes the subject. Accreditation from the National Home Watch Association is a useful additional signal here — accredited businesses have been vetted, with emphasis on being properly insured and bonded. (Curious what that involves? Here's what NHWA accreditation means.)

Ask to see a sample report

This is the single most revealing request you can make. A professional visit produces a professional record; ask for a sample (anonymized) report from a real visit and look for:

• Photos tied to specific checkpoints — not three generic shots of a living room.
• Timestamps and GPS-backed proof the visit happened at your home, at the stated time.
• Plain-language notes on what was checked and what was found.
• Evidence of a consistent structure — the same thorough format every visit, not improvisation.

"I'll text you if something's wrong" is not a reporting system. Silence that could mean 'all is well' or 'nobody showed up' is exactly what you're paying to eliminate.

How will you hear from them?

Ask what arrives after each visit and how you access history. The strongest answer in 2026 is a report after every visit plus an owner portal — one place where you (and family members you choose) can see every report, photo, issue, and invoice without digging through months of email. Ask, too, how they communicate around storms: before-and-after checks with photos are standard practice for good operators in storm-prone markets.

Get the agreement in writing

A professional company puts terms in writing: what a visit covers (and doesn't), the schedule, how keys and codes are handled, what they're authorized to do in an emergency and up to what spend, rates, and how either side ends the arrangement. Read the emergency clause with care — it's the one that matters when a pipe lets go while your phone is on a boat. No written agreement, no deal.

Pricing questions to ask

• What does the standard visit include, and what's the per-visit rate at my cadence?
• What do add-ons cost — storm checks, contractor meetings, extra visits — and are they priced up front?
• How does billing work? Clear invoices you can pay online are the professional norm.
• What happens if a visit is missed or rescheduled?

Cheapest is not the goal. The gap between a diligent operator and a drive-by service is a few dollars a visit — and one caught leak repays years of that difference.

Red flags

• Can't or won't produce an insurance certificate.
• No written agreement, or pressure to skip it.
• No sample report — or a 'report' that's a text message.
• Cash only, or vague answers about who exactly will enter your home.
• Reviews that mention missed visits or unreachable owners.

Where NestWatch fits

NestWatch is the software professional home watch operators run their businesses on: structured checklists, timestamped photos, GPS-backed proof of every visit, a report after every check, and a homeowner portal where you see it all. We don't watch homes ourselves — but if a company you're vetting runs on NestWatch, the sample report and portal above are exactly what you'll get. However your operator works, hold them to that standard: documented visits you can verify, not promises you have to trust.