Birds in flight may be beautiful, but their departure sometimes leaves the nest unprotected. And when that nest is in a condominium community, property managers and boards must do their best to compensate.

This region is full of snowbirds, who fly away from home during cold wintry weather, returning in the spring. Others are more like snow eagles, flying toward New England’s condos for the more challenging winter season, relishing snow, ice and hot toddies by the fire.

Regardless of which flight pattern applies, prolonged absences from individual units present associations and managers with a different set of issues, ranging from governance to insurance coverage, to the consequences of unforeseen damage. While only about 10 percent of New Englanders flock to Florida or other hot spots during the winter, their absence requires increased vigilance from management.

Lou Gargiulo, founder and CEO of Great North Property Management in Nashua, New Hampshire, says those in the 55+ age group are more likely to travel during the winter, with residents splitting their time between New England and a warmer climate. Planning for their absence is critical, he says.

“Typically, we prepare people in advance … to make sure certain things are accomplished,” Gargiulo says. “They have to leave a forwarding address and a phone number, plus have someone local on call, in the event of an emergency.” Great North oversees 185 communities in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts—among them 40 condo associations. With that level of responsibility, the company provides residents with guidance on the appropriate measures to take before leaving, to help prevent flooding or other mishaps from occurring.

To minimize the impact of such emergencies, Great North uses newsletters and its website to keep associations well-informed on the steps that need to be taken ahead of time. The company’s basic thrust, he says, is to be proactive, not reactive—in other words, head off problems before they develop, by having residents prepare their unit for cold weather. Not doing so is an invitation to burst pipes and similar damage-ridden outcomes.

“Telling them they should turn the water off, and have the heat tuned up each year, stops most of that from happening,” he says. “Generally speaking, they should make sure that oil or gas-serviced systems are tuned up, and in good working order. They should make sure they have automatic delivery, if it’s their responsibility.” Heat should be left at a minimum of 55 degrees, with curtains drawn to conserve energy. There’s another precaution, too. “A lot of our residents have cold-alarm systems in their homes, so the alarm goes to a central station, which contacts us or the homeowner.”

Failure to protect the unit against winter’s extremes also could expose the owner to liability, he says, so doing one’s homework before leaving is critical. Since these are mainly primary residences, Gargiulo says, most residents do take the necessary precautions. Leasing or renting out units in their absence is not frequently done and, in fact, short-term rentals are often prohibited in association bylaws. If there is a damage situation, Great North typically handles it, getting in with keys or emergency access. “We try to mitigate the loss, and contact the individual involved.”

On the other end of the scale are management issues pertaining to second-home condominiums, where ownership may be shared, or rentals more frequent, and owners have a primary residence elsewhere. These owners spend weekends or isolated weeks at their vacation home, but are absent the majority of time.

New England’s ski condos can be used year-round, offering various family entertainments during different seasons: skating and skiing; leaf peeping; hiking and swimming. Because they’re nearby, New Englanders will use them on and off, sometimes owning them in tandem with others.

Paul W. Carroccio, president and chief operating officer of TPW Management, LLC in Manchester Center, Vermont, has a firm that oversees the management needs of about 100 second-home condominium communities (involving 6,000 units). This includes Vermont resort areas at Stratton Mountain, Manchester, Mount Snow, Okemo, Burlington Upper Valley, Killington and Quechee Lakes. TPW also manages New Hampshire condominium properties and, more recently, beach residences in Delaware.

Carroccio says only about five to 10 percent of these owners frequent their condos in the summer, heading south for the winter, and often renting them out to skiers or other winter enthusiasts. Others lock the doors and leave, returning on free weekends for ski trips.

“We do unit checks throughout the winter on all of the units, to ensure heating systems work, the doors and windows are locked,” he says. Their frequency varies with the weather and individual association preferences. If it’s cold enough, TPW is there daily.

As is the case with conventional snowbird departures from main residences, preparation is critical when second-home condos are vacated, however temporarily. “We suggest they try and leave their windows and doors shut, with the heat turned to a temperature that’s safe,” Carroccio says. Freezing temperatures are a destructive force. “The pipes could freeze and break, and cause obvious damage to the unit itself, plus the surrounding units, and if the unit became damp, it could cause mildew or mold to grow,” Carroccio says. “Sometimes there are leaks in the walls from broken plumbing, or improperly installed plumbing. It drips, and you open up walls and there’s mold or rot.”

There is a cost for backup, but it’s included in the association fees, and everyone pays for it, whether they leave or not. They may opt out of having their residences checked, but they’ll still pay the fee.

By the way, in many locations crime isn’t nearly the concern for departing residents that the weather is, say site managers. “It’s very limited; we’re on the property all the time, and don’t have a big theft issue,” Carroccio says.

Prevention is one aspect of winter. Insurance protection is another. In fact, for those who might rent their units out (whether they do so or not can depend on their association bylaws), insurance is critical. If something happens—and often enough, it does—insurers are called in to inspect the damage. The association generally takes insurance for common areas and liability for board members, Carroccio says. “We recommend that each individual unit owner get a homeowner’s policy to cover personal items and contents for anything from damage to theft.”

Absent or not, management life goes on. Thanks to technology, absent unit owners—even if they’re board members—aren’t left out of the loop on management issues, Carroccio says. Email and websites have made a big difference in communications. It’s a little different, though, if one is managing a vacation site condominium association. In this setup, owners are absent on an uneven schedule; they reside in vacation mode awhile, but aren’t generally involved in daily operations—unlike those who head south in the typical five- or six-month snowbird flight pattern but do return to more permanent status.

“So there simply aren’t as many meetings,” Carroccio says. “The boards of directors we work with generally make the same decisions a primary board would make … (but) exclusive of the homeowners. They try real hard to get the homeowners to participate, but because they’re absent the board just has to make decisions in the best interest of the community. It’s a tough board role to fill.”

Try as they will, managers can’t anticipate everything that will happen.

“It doesn’t fail,” Carroccio says. “Every winter there’s a unit where the owners left, and turned the heating system off in the dead of winter. A heating system that’s off for three hours when the temperature is zero will cause freezing pipes to break and flood the units. It causes damage to surrounding units, below and beside it.”

When the insurance adjusters come in, it slows down the process of getting them fixed, and becomes a time-consuming process for property managers.

Chris Snow, senior account executive with Bernier & Snow Insurance Agency of Rochester, New Hampshire, handles master policies for associations governing residences ranging from two units to 400, located in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

One issue that comes up is that association members change, and may not be aware of the complications that can arise when people leave. So the first thing is sometimes to educate them.

At the snow eagle sites, there can be operational issues leading to damage. “People come in who aren’t there most of the year,” says Snow. They don’t know how to operate a fireplace, or they’re careless with the ashes, dump them in the trash and they’re not completely out.” Stuff like that, he says, “happens all the time.”

Bernier & Snow tries to inform associations about the concerns. “We sit down and talk,” he says. “And CAI (Community Associations Institute) offers many courses, and seminars we can put on to educate new boards.”

“My advice is to get a family member or professional company to go in weekly, or whatever schedule you set up, to check the unit out. If the heat ever goes out, and there’s water break, it creates a big, big claim.”

“We tell people to also purchase low-temperature lights to put in the window. If the temperature goes below a certain degree, the light will flash, alerting someone in the neighborhood or the property management to check that unit before a pipe can burst.”

Anything that happens inside the unit is the unit owner’s responsibility, ultimately. If bylaws are not precisely written, however, responsibility could shift, and become an issue for debate between the owner and any renter that might put in during their absence. “If you let someone use your unit and they start a fire, that could fall back on the association, depending on the bylaws, so it’s an issue.”

He recommends that each unit owner gets homeowner’s insurance (known as an HO-6 policy in a condo). The association will have a master policy, part of condo fees, in force. “One of the two will protect it,” he says. By the way, associations should be aware that a loss history on the master policy could leave them in danger of losing their policy. Then, he says, they’d have to find another policy, and perhaps pay more for it. Even an excess number of rentals can affect the risk exposure, he says, since data supports owner-occupied units as having less risk. “Companies have thresholds, and if you exceed the threshold, they’ll cancel you for that.”

Ann Connery Frantz is a freelance writer and a frequent contributor to New England Condominium.