Guide
What does a household manager do?
A household manager runs the house as a job, so that running the house stops being the owner's second job.
Search for the term and you get job boards. Here is the answer instead.
The short answer
The role in plain terms
A household manager takes ownership of everything a home needs and runs it through a system: what is in the house, when each part of it is due, which trade does the work, whether the work was done, and a record that outlasts anyone's memory.
A household manager takes ownership of everything a home needs and runs it through a system. That means knowing what is in the house, down to the furnace model and the water heater serial number. It means knowing when each part of it is due. The trades get chosen, scheduled and met at the property, the work gets checked, and the record gets kept.
The reason the role exists is arithmetic. Juggling vendors, schedules and follow ups is a full time job. On a house with a furnace, a water heater, a sump, irrigation and a roof over it, most owners are doing that job in the gaps of another one. Handing it over does not make the work disappear. It makes the work ours.
Search the phrase and almost everything returned is a job listing, because households use that term when they are hiring staff, not buying a service. In Carmel and Zionsville the function is far more often bought than hired. The economics of the two are very different.
Guide
What the job covers day to day
The work divides into four parts, and the first one is the part most people skip. We write down what is in the house. We document all of a home's systems by make, model and serial number, from the furnace to the sump pump, because every decision after that is cheaper when it is made from a file.
The other three are scheduling, coordination and follow through. Recurring maintenance broken out by month. The right trade booked, met and paid. The result checked, and what happened written down where it can be found next year.
- Every system documented by make, model and serial number
- A maintenance calendar broken out month by month
- Vendor selection, booking and property access
- Projects scoped, quoted and seen through to completion
- A record of what was done, when, and what it cost
In practice
Hiring versus buying the service
A household manager on payroll is an employee: a salary, payroll taxes, benefits, cover for the weeks they are away, and somebody to manage the manager. On a large estate with staff and grounds that is the right answer, and it is why the role exists at all.
For most houses it is not. Buying the same function as a service costs a fraction of what a traditional home manager costs, without cutting corners on service. A plan runs $175 to $350 a month depending on what the house needs and how much the owner wants to keep.
The other difference is coverage. One person can only know the vendors they have personally used. A firm that has scheduled and coordinated over 1,500 projects across every trade has a much wider list, and it does not go on vacation.
Questions
Common questions
What is the role of a household manager?
To run the home as a system. We document what is in a house by make, model and serial number, schedule what it needs month by month, choose and manage the trades who do the work, and keep the record. The owner makes the decisions. The manager makes everything else happen.
What is a house manager versus a nanny?
Different jobs entirely. A nanny cares for children. A house manager cares for the property and the logistics around it. Some large households employ both, and they report separately.
How much does a household manager cost?
Employed, it is a salary with the employment costs attached. Bought as a service from us, it runs $175 to $350 a month and the trades bill their own work at cost with no markup added.
Does a household manager do the repairs?
Generally no, and we do not. We may change a filter, battery, or bulb, but we are typically not the handymen doing the fixes. Keeping the coordination separate from the work means the trade never checks its own results.
Is this the same as property management?
No. Property management is a landlord service and we do not offer it. A household manager works for the person who lives in the house or keeps it for their own use.
Get started
Have the role filled without a hire
The function is the same. The cost structure is not.
A walkthrough at the house is how the plan and the price get set.
- We walk the house and record it
- You decide what you keep and what you hand over
- The plan runs from there
Request your walkthrough
Both Ned and Luke get an email and a text, and they follow up with you.