Alarm, monitoring, concierge: who covers what, exactly

An owner at Le Moulleau once showed me his contracts: a monitored alarm, a seasonal concierge, a pool maintenance contract, a gardener. Four providers, a comfortable annual spend, and a reasonable belief that he was covered.

His roof had been letting water in for two winters. None of the four had a remit to go up and look, and none had.

Nobody is at fault. It is a problem of boundaries.

I. The four trades, and their exact scope

The alarm

A detection system — door contacts, motion detectors, siren — that signals an intrusion. Sold on its own, it alerts the owner and makes a noise.

Covers: intrusion, in real time. Does not cover: everything else. And with no recipient able to attend, the siren merely informs the neighbourhood.

Monitored security

An alarm linked to a monitoring centre operating continuously. On activation, an operator carries out verification — by audio, images or telephone — then, depending on the contract, alerts the police or dispatches a response officer.

Covers: intrusion, with verification and a triggered response. Does not cover: water, frost, roof, damp, maintenance.

The thing to check before signing is the actual on-site response time. Around the Bay, a response officer may be thirty or forty minutes away depending on the hour, the season and the commune. In August, traffic between Arcachon and Cap Ferret can double that. The figure never appears in the brochure; it sometimes appears in the particular conditions. Ask for it in writing.

Caretaking

A physical presence, periodic or permanent: patrols, checking access points, verifying openings, sometimes attending deliveries or trades.

Covers: deterrence by presence, regular visual inspection. Does not cover: technical assessment. A security officer checks that a door is closed; they do not judge the state of a flashing or whether a safety group is working.

The concierge

A service trade built around the stay: welcome, cleaning, linen, shopping, bookings, and for letting concierges the listings, arrivals and departures.

Covers: use of the house, comfort, logistics. Does not cover: the condition of the property out of season. That is structural, not a criticism: a letting concierge is paid on the letting, its economic interest lies in the weeks booked, and its expertise is hospitality, not building.

II. The table nobody gives you

The interesting column is not the last one. It is the four middle rows, where four columns out of five read "no".

Those four rows account, in our experience, for most of the real cost borne by second-home owners. Not burglaries — which are dramatic, memorable and relatively rare — but the slow deterioration of a building nobody is inspecting technically.

III. What insurers make of it

A point often missed: second-home policies draw a sharp line between the two registers.

For theft, a monitored alarm is valued, sometimes required above a certain contents sum insured, and may condition the level of settlement.

For damage to property — water, frost, storm — it is not the alarm that counts, but compliance with the required precautions: water shut off, frost protection, servicing of equipment, and periodic visits capable of proof.

In other words, the arrangement that protects your theft settlement does nothing at all for your water settlement. Many owners are excellently covered against the least likely risk and exposed on the most frequent.

IV. How to combine all this without paying twice

Our reading, after taking over a number of existing arrangements:

Keep the monitored alarm if you have valuable contents or artwork, and check the real response time. It is the right tool for intrusion, and nothing replaces it.

Keep the concierge if you let the property or want to arrive to a house that is ready. It is a service trade, and a good concierge earns their fee.

Remove the duplication. We regularly see two contracts covering the same thing — for instance a concierge charging for "check visits" where the monitoring provider already dispatches an officer.

Fill the gap. Technical monitoring of the fabric, preventive maintenance, coordination of trades and documentary records fall within none of the three trades above. That is the gap estate management occupies, and it is also why we designed our monitoring module to sit alongside an existing concierge rather than replace one.

We set out the boundaries, with the questions to ask each provider, in Concierge, caretaker, estate manager: an honest comparison.