On the back roads of Dunham or Frelighsburg, people know each other. A neighbour offers to “keep an eye on” the cottage over the winter, and it’s a generous offer you’d be foolish to turn down. Still, a friendly look and a proper visit log don’t do the same job.

What to do if a neighbour already checks in

1. Thank them, and keep them in the loop

A neighbour who lives there year-round is often the first to notice a strange car in the driveway, a fallen tree or lights that stopped coming on. That presence is genuinely valuable. Nothing here says you should do without it.

2. Clarify what “keeping an eye on it” means

Do they drive past on the road, or go inside? Do they look at the basement? When do they come by, and what do they do if they see something? Often each side has a different picture of the arrangement, and nobody likes to ask.

3. Give them a short written list

If your neighbour is happy to go in, leave a few simple points: the thermostat reading, the basement floor, doors locked, mail and parcels. Add your contact details, those of an RBQ-licensed plumber and electrician, and where the main shut-off is.

4. Ask them to jot down their visits

A date and one line per visit, by text or in a notebook, is already far better than nothing. You’ll know when someone was last inside, and your neighbour won’t have to remember everything.

Why a friendly look isn’t always enough

You can’t hold a volunteer to a schedule. Your neighbour has a life: a trip south, a cold, a busy week, a storm that keeps them home. That’s normal — and it’s exactly why a friendly arrangement comes with no guaranteed frequency. The riskiest stretches — a cold snap, freezing rain, an outage — are often when they have the most to deal with at their own place.

They see the outside, rarely the inside. Many neighbours drive by or walk the property. That’s useful for a forced door or a fallen branch. But a slow basement leak, a water meter that keeps moving, a room going cold or mouse droppings in the cupboard can only be seen from inside.

Without a list, you look at what catches the eye. An attentive person notices the obvious. A fixed checklist makes you look at the same spots every time, including the ones where nothing usually happens — and that’s often where a problem starts.

Without dates or photos, there’s no record. If damage happens, your insurer may ask when the house was last visited and what state it was in. “My neighbour pops by now and then” is hard to show. What your insurer considers enough depends on your policy: conditions vary from one insurer to the next, and your broker can tell you what applies to your cottage.

The friendship gets awkward when things go wrong. If a pipe splits between your neighbour’s visits, nobody wants to ask them why they didn’t notice. And your neighbour doesn’t want to carry that responsibility either.

The Townships don’t make it easier. Cottages are often far apart, at the top of steep driveways nobody walks up in winter. In parts of Sutton or Potton, the closest neighbours are secondary home owners themselves, away at the same time you are.

Combining both: what you can do, and what belongs to the pros

What an owner can do:

Keep the neighbour as your first local contact, with their agreement, and let whoever does the visits know.
Put in writing who does what: the neighbour reports what they see outside, regular visits cover the inside and the documentation.
Leave a key and instructions in one place both of them know about.
Pause newspaper deliveries and forward the mail so the house doesn’t look empty.
Check with your broker what your policy requires when the house is unoccupied.

What belongs to professionals:

An RBQ-licensed contractor: any repair, even if your neighbour is handy. If they get hurt or the fix fails, it gets complicated for everyone.
An alarm company, if you want one: responding to an alarm in the middle of the night.

In an empty house, how long before anyone notices?

With a friendly arrangement, the honest answer is: nobody knows. It depends on the neighbour, their schedule and the weather. With regular visits, the answer is written in the contract, and every visit leaves a dated report. Neither one stops a pipe from splitting. The difference is how long water can run before anyone knows, and the record of what was checked.

What we look at on a visit

Every visit, we try every exterior door, look at the reachable door and window frames for pry marks, and pick up the parcels and flyers that signal an empty house. We note any footprints or vehicle tracks that no planned visit explains. Inside, we read the water meter or well pressure gauge with every tap closed, and the thermometer in the coldest room. Every finding is photographed and time-stamped in the report.

If something’s off, we call you the same day, with photos. If needed, we meet an RBQ-licensed contractor on site and document the work.

Helpful neighbours: why a friendly look isn’t the same as a visit log