Maintaining Your Property At Holiday Time
By JD Esajian on December 4, 2013
With Thanksgiving officially behind us, we are now full steam ahead towards Christmas and the New Year. With this comes excessive decorations, candles, fires and of course Christmas trees. You may be hesitant to say something to your tenants about safety and adhering to the lease, but more mishaps occur around Christmas than any other time of the year. If you are afraid to come across as a Grinch, you may regret it when you get a phone call from the fire department or you tenant notifying you of damage to your roof. Take the time to maintain your properties around the holiday season.
If you are renting a house during the holidays and winter months, there are a few things that you should kindly remind your tenants. The first is to be aware of where they are plugging things in. Some outlets cannot hold the four sets of exterior lights they want to put up. Before they put up any lights, have them run it by you first. This does not mean that they can’t have lights or other decorations, but they have to be smart about it. Each year there are over 12,000 injuries from roof falls, small fires and shocks directly related to exterior Christmas lights.
If you have a fireplace, you can expect your tenants to use it. If you have not had your chimney cleaned, now is the time to do it. Not only are they cleaning out the physical chimney, but odds are the base has not been cleaned since last year as well. If this has accumulated too rapidly, especially with Duraflame synthetic logs, this could catch quickly. Your tenants are paying for that fireplace every month, and unless you state in the lease that they cannot use it, you should expect that they are going to.
In addition to physical damage sustained by tenants, your property could suffer damage if you do not communicate well. If they are leaving the property for a week or so, they need to contact you. They may think that they could turn the heat down or even off to save money, but this will end up freezing the pipes and leaving you, the landlord, with a big mess on your hands. Stay in contact with your tenants every month to see if they are leaving and if there is anything that you should be aware of.