It’s not every day in Bluffton, South Carolina that we are plunged into record-setting cold. Winter Storm Elliot showed up uninvited to the 2022 holidays at a time that left many in the lowcountry unprepared. For those of you that were celebrating at home, but away from your 2nd home investment property, or traveling and simply away during the holidays, did you have anyone who could check on your house during the unexpected deep freeze? When you own investment property, particularly located some distance from your primary residence, it’s crucial to have someone reliable and trustworthy to manage your investment and ensure that everything is being monitored. Here are some things to consider when choosing a private home care firm to manage your property.

Site-based with boots on the ground

With offices onsite and located within the Palmetto Bluff resort, our team regularly monitor the homes of our private home care clients. Regular inspections ensure that quality standards are maintained year-round and custom preventative care programs help protect your valuable home investment. Our team in Palmetto Bluff works closely with locally-based vendors and provide professional and skilled maintenance services to meet the upkeep needs of your property.  Our staff are hand-picked for their skills, reliability, trust, and integrity.

At the core of what we do, we take care of your home like it was our own

According to the National Real Estate Insurance Group the three leading causes of property damage are fire, theft/vandalism, and water damage. That’s why, at the height of the freezing weather in Bluffton, we mobilized our team to visit every property in our care and ensure that faucets were left at a drip, both inside and outside spigots too. We continued to visit our private home care portfolio throughout the days when the nighttime temperatures were in the teens and 20s to ensure that no pipes had burst, check outside landscaping sprinklers, and assure the HVAC systems were functioning correctly. 

Building codes in the lowcountry aren’t always required to protect for sub-freezing temperatures. Particularly in coastal communities, where homes are often elevated to meet FEMA flood standards, pipes can be exposed to the elements or located in areas that are unprotected from windy and cold temperatures. Compounded by the fact that many of these homes are unattended or unoccupied when pipes freeze and burst, water can be leaking for days or weeks before anyone would know.

Continuous Home Oversight

Because we know there is a lot going on in the outside world and your time is valuable, the care and oversight of your second home asset can’t always be top of mind. When you’re not there to watch out for your home, you need to make sure someone else is. 

Things that a home care management firm should specifically be checking for:

• Frozen pipes
• Water or other damage to the home
• General disrepair or other problems
• Temperature control and home security
• Vandalism/Evidence of trespassers
• Systems and appliance checks
• Wi-Fi and AV checks
• Leaks and smells
• Repairs and maintenance items
• Pest control
• Trash removal

Your property is an important asset – so is managing it

It’s important to realize that property is a major asset within a portfolio – and property management helps protect the value of this asset. For example, you wouldn’t invest $10 million into a fund and then just leave it without any observation or without someone reporting on its progress. Luxury property management should be treated in much the same way.  We understand the values that are the most important to high-net-worth individuals – time and convenience. With every detail being handled by our team plus unlimited access to our extensive network of vetted partners, clients don’t need to be concerned about looking for service providers or dealing with external contractors.

We know you have high standards – that’s why we do too

With Luxury Simplified Home Services, each property gets its own dedicated property team available everyday.  Our reputation for integrity and trust is built upon attending to the details and our staff are locals with deep roots in the community who care about getting it right. Our focus is on quality not quantity, ensuring that we consistently meet the highest standards. Our proactive approach and focus on planned management ensure that preventative maintenance, where required, will reduce breakdowns and consequential disruption to a client’s home. We work with trusted partners who are experts in their field so clients are never exploited by supplier networks when services are in peak demand.

What Should you Expect from Private Home Care Management

Private home management services should include an array of service offerings, including but not limited to:

• Cleaning and Housekeeping Management – Arrange and manage cleaning services and supplies to service your home according to your individual needs. Regular and seasonal housekeeping to a high standard ensures the best experience for you and your guests.
• Maintenance Management – Inspections are fully documented ensuring reliability and accountability. When any problems arise in our clients’ properties, such as leaks or cracks, we are there to deploy our vendors immediately. Any problems are promptly reported to you so that repairs are conducted to fix the problem with minimal disruption of your property.
• Contractor Service Management – With your property management contract, you have access to our network of proven suppliers and vendors ensuring that you will receive the best care and value for services provided to your home.  We will help secure bids for contract services including interior and exterior painting, carpet cleaning, drapes and upholstery maintenance, audio-visual, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, appliance repair, roofing, pool maintenance, and landscaping.
• Express, Freight Shipment & Package Handling Management
• Accounting Services & Bill Pay – Upon request, receive invoices and statements and schedule payment of local utilities and expenses associated with your home.

High Touch Concierge Service 

Luxury Simplified Retreats has built a reputation for excellence in vacation rental management and concierge guest services for nearly 10 years. With the introduction of Luxury Simplified Home Services we now offer the opportunity for owners of select homes and residences in Palmetto Bluff, and the Charleston SC area, to receive our comprehensive property management services without being part of our rental portfolio. This means that second home owners seeking five-star property management can enjoy all the management advantages and white glove hospitality service that comes from being a part of the Luxury Simplified portfolio. 

With our experience as luxury vacation specialists you will also have access to the best Concierge team in the area to help you plan the perfect stay in your home.  They will assist in making dinner reservations, arranging private instruction, ground transportation, booking tee times, spa appointments, fishing, horseback riding and any other activities that might make your stay more enjoyable.

At Luxury Simplified Home Services our goal is to ensure that your experience of owning a home in the lowcountry is about the moments shared with loved ones and the memories created, not the challenges of maintaining an investment property that may not incur year round use. Professional home care ensures that your Palmetto Bluff home is protected from day-to-day risks and unexpected maintenance problems. To do this takes a diligent and skilled team of property management specialists with the resources and experience to handle it all with ease.

Palmetto Bluff is a beautiful place but also a remote location for a second home. Since it is both considered to be one of the premiere private resort communities in the Southeast, and is set among some of the most breathtaking landscape along the May River in Bluffton, SC it’s an easy choice as a second home destination. After building our own full-time residence, and with three additional investment properties currently underway here, we honestly can’t imagine living anywhere else. But, for those who own a second home here, who looks after it when you’re away?

When you decide to travel and spend time in Palmetto Bluff, it’s only natural that you wish to arrive at a home ready to enjoy. Before you even arrive there is maintenance to be arranged, staging and decoration to be finalized, concierge supplies to be stocked, chefs and outings to be arranged and oh, did I mention, gardens to be weeded and bug sprayed, and perhaps even the pool cleaned? This isn’t the way we’d want a vacation to begin and we don’t imagine you do either.

Our Home Services team evolved from the frequent need for our own home management as we travel abroad a fair amount ourselves. As homeowners we understand needing a professional and trusted company to see to it that our home is well taken care of when we are away. While Luxury Simplified was already up and running in Charleston, SC and the surrounding barrier islands, it has now been fully launched in Palmetto Bluff.

Because we believe in an “all under one roof” approach, we have brought together:

• a home maintenance service, licensed, insured and best of all on site in Palmetto Bluff
• a vacation concierge to stock your home with all those essentials and arrange your events and exploration.
• a construction company, Simplified Construction, for renovations, extensions and new builds, classed as “A Grade” for operation in the community by the Palmetto Bluff DRB.
• a licensed real estate brokerage to work with you in the event of changing interests in your real estate needs

This is our company, Luxury Simplified Home Services. Multiple award-winning, ranked by Air DNA as among the top 3 in the Carolina’s in STR rental management, awarded by Historic Charleston Foundation for our work in historic preservation in the city, and most recently published by Architectural Digest for our first custom home build in Palmetto Bluff. We are a family owned and operated company and reside full-time in Palmetto Bluff. We work hard and are dedicated in providing personalized property management to our homeowners.

What should you expect from a luxury property management team? First it is to protect your investment and make owning your home worry free and enjoyable. This includes a wide range of services from weekly or monthly property checks, detailed reporting, and vendor oversight, to receiving and securing deliveries at your home on your behalf and home preparation before you arrive.

Wondering who will be there in case of an emergency at your home? We will. In your absence we are on call 24 hours a day. Why worry you with immediate problems? That’s what we’re here for.

Experienced in servicing the most high-end, luxury homes and with an extensive preferred vendor list in the area, we approach our oversight of each property from the perspective of the homeowner, not from that of a contractor or vendor. Our primary role is to safeguard the property for our owners and to communicate with them before, during and after their stay. That means we will coordinate bidding work as needed, meet with service contractor to give access to your home, stay until the work is complete, and lock up following their departure.

Expecting a restful vacation? We will ensure your home away from home is always cared for and protect your family investment. While our Bluffton-based company includes vacation rental management, construction & renovation, and design services, the primary focus of our company is oversight of non-rental property management for absentee homeowners in Palmetto Bluff and along coastal South Carolina. Do I have you intrigued at all on how we can help smooth the way for you locally? Then let us have a quick discussion on how we may be able to help that happen.