for second-home owners
The house you can't inventory from memory.
A vacation or second home is the one you visit, not the one you live in — which makes its contents impossible to recall after a loss and its damage easy to miss for weeks. Document it on your next trip, and the record is ready whenever something goes wrong while you're away.
You can't recall a house you're rarely in
The contents of a vacation or second home are the hardest of all to list from memory — you don't live with them daily. After a loss you'd be reconstructing a place you visit a few weeks a year. A walkthrough on your next trip captures it once, so the claim isn't a guessing game from three states away.
Unoccupied is higher risk, not lower
An empty house is more exposed, not less: break-ins, a burst pipe in winter, storm damage that goes undiscovered for weeks. Timestamped photo evidence of the contents means that when you finally do find the damage, you can prove what was there before it — even if no one saw it happen.
Two homes, two dated records
Keep a separate, dated inventory for each property, so a claim on the lake house or the city pied-à-terre stands on its own evidence. Re-scan on a later visit to keep each one current as you furnish it over the years.
Worth being direct about scope: a second or seasonal home often needs its own policy, and some insurers limit coverage on a home left unoccupied for long stretches — worth confirming with your agent. This documents the contents of each property; it doesn't set the policy terms.