In this instructional video, Beth Dodson from HomeZada walks viewers through three essential ways to use the HomeZada platform for managing vacation or second homes. First, she explains how to create a detailed home inventory by using a mobile phone to photograph and record items, emphasizing its importance for insurance claims, rental preparation, and personal organization. Second, she describes how to set up and track location‑specific maintenance tasks—such as seasonal pipe protection, roof‑snow removal, or hurricane‑ready preparations—and how to assign these tasks to house managers or concierges. Third, she shows how to log regional vendors, schedule their services, and monitor budgets for each property, enabling owners to control cash flow, plan annual maintenance costs, and coordinate contractors for rentals or swaps. Throughout, Dodson presents the steps in a conversational, enthusiastic tone, positioning HomeZada as a simple, centralized solution for owners who split time between multiple properties.
Chapters
Hi everyone, Beth Dodson here from Home Zada. I hope you are having a wonderful day and a great beginning to your summer. One of the things I thought of today was summer World Cup. As you can see, I'm a big fan of Argentina since the U.S. couldn't make it this year, so I'm a big supporter. And I thought of Vacation homes. Many people do have a vacation home or a second home that they want to manage, and they don't know how to do that or what is viable inside Homesala that can help them do that. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about managing vacation homes and second homes in Homesala today. So the first thing that you may want to do with your vacation home is to take a home inventory. The next time you visit your vacation home, you simply use your cell phone, log into your account, make sure your new property is in the account, or you can add the property at that time, and walk around and take pictures using your mobile phone. You can add data into your mobile phone. You can even make it a game for your kids during the week while you're on vacation for a little project. So it's really simple, and it's important to know what you own in your vacation home if you're not around. And there's a couple simple reasons. One, because you spend less time in your vacation home, things may happen to it, and you want to make sure that you can report what is in your home should anything happen to it. And that could be a robbery, it could be, um, a hurricane if you prefer beach area vacations, it could be a wildfire, and we've had a lot of those in the last year. Because maybe you prefer a mountain home. So making sure that you can document what you own is important in case you need to file a claim. The other reason why you want to take a home inventory is because you know what's in your home if you decide you want to rent it. So you may have a room that you want to rent for Airbnb. You may want to use HomeAway and rent all of the home during periods of time when you're not using it to earn some extra income. Whatever the case, knowing what you own will also help understand what was there when you were there, when you last visited the home, and then when you next visit it, you'll know what's in good standing and what's in good functioning and working and operating order. So it's another good reason. So just precautions here and there. Other reasons to know why you want a home inventory of your home is because you may leave things in your vacation home. You may choose to say that, you know what, I have a vacation home and I'm going to stretch it a little bit, and I have a mountain home. I go in there in the summer, but I also go there in the winter. Because I have a mountain home, I leave all my skis, I leave all my snowboards, I leave all of my winter gear for the mountain in my mountain home. I can't use it in my regular home, but I can use it in my mountain home, so I leave it there. But knowing what you have and remembering what you have in that home is really good through a home inventory. Really simple. So you can click quickly check it, the home inventory that is inside HomeZada, to know what you have in your mountain home prior to visiting your home. So that's the first thing. I'm going to take a quick peek at my notes here. Okay, so the other thing you want to know about and why it's important to track a second home in HomeZada is tracking home maintenance. Whether you're in your home or not, our homes actually do need, um, maintenance and they need care. And sometimes our homes in other areas of the country or in other areas of the world may need a little bit more maintenance if they are prone to saltwater air or seawater air. There tends to be some other elements that you may need to accommodate. So you want to make sure that you have those maintenance tasks assigned to your home. And when you can have those maintenance tasks assigned to that home, that vacation home, they may be different than your primary home. If you have a beach vacation home, more than likely, if you live in traditional 4 seasons, you will not have to plow your driveway or wrap your pipes because they freeze. More than likely, you will have to turn off your water when you're not using the home, and you may need to have boards set aside in case a hurricane comes through. If you have a mountain home, you may live in a warm weather territory like Arizona and decide that you want a Colorado mountain home that you go to in the winter. In that case, you need to understand how to protect your pipes when they freeze, turn off your water in those cases. You want to make sure that you are cleaning off the roofline of extensive amounts of snow so it doesn't weigh down the roofline, and a variety of other maintenance tasks. So your maintenance tasks may vary depending on where you live in the country and the types of vacation homes you have around the world or in the U.S. So maintenance tasks are really easy to manage. The other thing that maintenance tasks bring you is you have a relationship potentially with a house manager or a property manager or some other house concierge personnel that may want to help you in off months. So for instance, if you cannot make it to your home in the month of June, Then you may want someone to stop in and perform some tasks, whether it's cleaning tasks, whether it's changing your air filters, whether it's making sure the gutters are cleaned, what have you. You may want to have these maintenance tasks available and ready for your house manager, home concierge manager, etc., so that they can perform these tasks prior to your arrival. The other thing that I wanted to talk to you about beyond home inventory, home maintenance, is understanding who your vendors are. Generally, when we have a home in one region of the world, we have a different home in another region. Our contractors and the vendors that we use generally do not go to the next region. They are generally regional players that work where you currently live. So one of the things that I really love about HomeZada is not only can I track all of my vendors for my primary home, but I can actually track all my vendors for a second home, which is really important because those vendors are going to be different. For instance, let's say you have a house in Maryland and then you have a house in Florida. It's a long way from Maryland to Florida. There's a lot of states in between there. So what you may want to do is track the vendors that you're using in your property for your Florida home in HomeZada and then track your vendors for your Maryland home In that property in Maryland. So it makes it really simple to know who you work with, and if you need a vendor to go into your home while you're not there, you can do that by having this information about each one of your contractors and your vendors for that specific house. So this is one of the things that I really love about HomeSada is tracking my vendors because I tend to use the same vendors each year. And I have them on my maintenance schedule, so I know exactly when during what part of the year they will be returning. I can also track my budgets for that particular house, and I understand what it's going to cost me the following year. So I'm prepared by having my schedule, my maintenance schedule. I'm prepared by having my vendors all logged into my system, and I'm prepared because I understand what the annual cost For my maintenance will be for each individual house. And so I have the ability to manage cash flow. This is also good, um, let's say you don't have a second home but you want to manage rooms in your home. The same thing holds true. You can manage the details about that particular room if you want to choose to use it on Airbnb or you want to do house swaps when you want to go on vacation. All these same activities hold true for managing your property. And I believe that's it. These are my 3 key tips to using HomeZada for managing multiple homes and vacation homes.
