Florida Seasonal Residents & Home Services
Florida seasonal residents are homeowners who spend part of the year in Florida and the rest somewhere else. When something needs doing at the Florida home, the owner is often searching from another state, on their own schedule, and may not be the person who lets the contractor in. In Mark Riley’s paid search work, people searching from outside a client’s area, from other states and from Canada, were a real source of leads. At Riley Summers, we build Florida campaigns to reach seasonal owners wherever they’re searching from, around the months they’re here and away, and to speak to whoever makes the decision, whether that’s the owner, a property manager or a home watch service.
On this page
- Who Seasonal Customers Are
- Year-Round vs. Seasonal Residents
- The Away From Home Framework
- What It Means for the Business
- Related Resources
Who Seasonal Customers Are
Florida has one of the largest concentrations of seasonal homes in the country. In the 2020 Census, five of the 10 U.S. counties with the most seasonal vacant homes were in Florida. In Broward and Miami-Dade counties, seasonal homes outnumbered vacant homes for rent or sale.
For a home services business, the seasonal customer usually falls into one of three groups:
- Part-year residents who live in Florida for the cooler months and somewhere else the rest of the year, often in another state or in Canada.
- Second-home owners who visit for shorter stays through the year.
- Owners who rent the home out while they’re away, so the property is in use but the person paying for the work isn’t there.
Seasonal owners also arrive in waves. The regular seasonal residents start arriving in November. A second wave comes with baseball spring training in late winter. Fifteen major league teams train in Florida, from Jupiter and West Palm Beach to Port St. Lucie, Fort Myers and the Tampa Bay area, bringing players, staff and their families down for several weeks, often into rented homes that need to be ready before they arrive.
What they have in common is a home that’s often empty, or occupied by someone else, during Florida’s heat, rainy season and hurricane season. Problems can build up with no one there to notice, and the owner hears about them from a distance.
How Riley Summers helps: We treat seasonal owners as their own audience, with their own timing and decision-makers, rather than folding them into campaigns built for year-round residents.
Year-Round vs. Seasonal Residents
Here’s how seasonal residents compare with year-round residents.
| Year-round residents | Seasonal residents | |
|---|---|---|
| Is something wrong? | Usually noticed right away by the person living there | Often found late, by a property manager, home watch service or tenant, or when the owner arrives |
| Decision window | Set by how urgent the problem is | Often tied to the owner’s travel dates: fixed before they arrive, or handled from a distance |
| Main marketing challenge | Being found by a local searcher when the need comes up | Reaching an owner who may be searching from another state, and the people they rely on locally |
| How they usually book | Phone or contact form, with the homeowner there for the visit | Phone or contact form, often through a property manager or home watch service, with no one home for the visit |
| Key metric | Leads per campaign and in total | Leads per campaign and in total, plus branded searches while remarketing keeps the business in front of owners who are away |
The Away From Home Framework
We call our approach to seasonal owners the Away From Home Framework. It has four steps, each built around the fact that the owner, and often the decision, isn’t in Florida.
- Reach Them Where They Are
- Time It to Their Calendar
- Reach Whoever Decides
- Make Distance Easy
1. Reach Them Where They Are
A seasonal owner who needs work done on their Florida home may be searching from another state, or from Canada. We set paid search campaigns up to reach people searching for help in the client’s service area, not just people who happen to be standing in it, so the business is found by the owner wherever they are. In Mark Riley’s paid search work, most leads from outside the area were decent ones, though, as with any lead, not every one becomes a job.
2. Time It to Their Calendar
Seasonal demand follows the owner’s travel. There’s work to get the home ready before they arrive, from November and again ahead of spring training. There’s work while they’re here, and work to close the home up before they leave. While they’re away, we can remarket to owners who have visited the client’s site, or to past customers where the client provides a customer list, so the business is the first name they think of when they’re ready to book.
3. Reach Whoever Decides
The person who books the work isn’t always the owner. In single-family neighborhoods, a home watch service often chooses the contractor. In condominiums, the management company often books work on units whose owners are away. In a rented home, it may be the tenant who calls. We write ads and landing pages that speak to someone managing a home from a distance, as well as to the owner, so each of them sees a business set up to work with them. Condo management companies are covered in our Condominiums & HOAs guide.
4. Make Distance Easy
An owner hiring from another state wants to know how the job will work without them there. Where the business offers it, we make that clear in the ads and on the landing page: work done while no one’s home, keyholder access, and updates sent to the owner. Messaging that answers those questions up front removes a reason to keep looking.
How Riley Summers helps: Seasonal owners get campaigns that reach them where they are, on their timing, and that speak to whoever is making the call, so the business stays in front of them all year, not just during the months they’re in Florida.
Are your campaigns reaching owners who aren’t in Florida?
Riley Summers will review your paid search campaigns and show you whether seasonal owners, and the people who book work for them, can find your business.
What It Means for the Business
For a Florida home services business, marketing to seasonal owners opens up work that local-only campaigns tend to miss.
- Customers competitors overlook. Campaigns built only for people searching from inside the service area miss owners searching from another state or from Canada. Reaching them means competing for work many local competitors never see.
- Work that can be planned ahead. Much seasonal work is tied to the owner’s arrival and departure, so it can be booked in advance rather than arriving all at once.
- More than one home at a time. In single-family neighborhoods, home watch services often choose the contractor when something needs fixing at a seasonal owner’s home. In condominiums, the management company often books work on units whose owners are away. Either way, one relationship with a business they trust can lead to work on many properties.
- Customers who come back every year. Seasonal owners return season after season. A business they trust with their home is the one they call again, which makes each new seasonal customer worth more than a single job.
How Riley Summers helps: We help Florida businesses reach the seasonal owners and the people who look after their homes, so the business wins work that campaigns built only for local residents leave on the table.
Related Resources
About The Author
Mark Riley is a marketing executive and the founder of Riley Summers Marketing Group, where he leads customer acquisition strategy for home services businesses across paid search, Google Local Services Ads, local SEO and paid social media. He rose to VP of Digital at a national legal-marketing agency, where the digital programs he led generated a significant share of its revenue. Over a 15+ year career, he has managed more than $70 million in digital advertising spend, much of it in one of the most expensive and competitive advertising categories in North America. He measures marketing by what it costs to win a booked job, not by traffic or lead volume.