Property Management Blog

If this House is a Rockin, Maybe it is Hurricane Season..

Here at Home & Condo, we like to say we are not property managers, but investment managers. Your home is your investment and we manage your investment for you. As with all investments, you want to make sure that your investment is safe and well protected. We are officially entering Hurricane season down here and to kick things off, we had a pretty nice little system dump rain on us for the greater part of the last two weeks. Welcome to Sunny Florida ☺. This brings me to this month’s blog topic: How to prepare and best protect your property during hurricane season. Below are some tips for protecting your home as best you can in the event of a hurricane making landfall in Venice.

1. Bring all lanai furniture inside and/or secure all items outside so that they don’t become projectiles. Obviously hurricanes bring gale force winds so anything that is free standing and lite enough to be picked up and hurled through the air should be brought inside or somehow battened down so they can’t fly. Some common examples of such items are:
   
   1. Lanai Furniture
   2. Trash cans/recycling bins
   3. Firewood
   4. Building materials
   5. Lawn care equipment
   6. Etc.- Use common sense here. If it seems lite enough for you to pick up, chances are 140 mph winds will be able to do the same
2. Storm shutter: If you have storm shutters, you should put them up. If you don’t, you should get plywood to cover the windows. You may have your home prepped for a hurricane, but that does not mean that your neighbors have done the same. The storm shutters will help prevent things from breaking your windows and flying into your home and exposing your home to the elements.
3. Shut off the main water source to you home (note: if you do this, make sure you turn the power off to your water heater as well). If a pipe breaks with water running through it while you are away, there will be significantly more damage than if it breaks with no water running through it.

If you prep now, things are a lot easier if/when a storm starts to make its way here. The worst thing to do is wait until 5 hours before land fall and try to do everything then. Plus, it is much more pleasant to do it now as opposed to trying to do it in the middle of a rain storm. By doing some of these preventative measures, you will save yourselves a ton of headaches in the event a hurricane comes this way. REMEMBER: DON’T WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO PREPARE!

Thank you for taking the time to read our blog. This is the third in a series that we hope will help educate both owners and tenants in the Venice, Nokomis, Osprey, North Port and Englewood area. Once again, if there is ever a question that anyone has, please do not hesitate to call us.

Thanks and have a wonderful day!!
Sincerely,
The Home & Condo Staff