Significant Maintence with Rental

[mswhitac]

Hi all,

Curious how others manage significant maintenance, like painting the exterior entire house, with an active rental?  I think our tenant is ok with it, but clearly an inconvenience for 2-3 days with crews working full days.  Thank you for your thoughts. 

[uniwelder]

Its inconvenient for the tenant, but expected that maintenance will occur.  My tenants have generally appreciated me improving and caring about the property they live in. 

I would just make sure work is contained to one side of the house or the other at a time, so there aren't issues with access to either the front or side/back door.  Don't want to get them completely boxed in or barricaded out, or give them reason to worry about hitting a ladder while opening a door.

[calimom]

As a tenant once went through a roof repair with a new baby trying to sleep. It did feel inconvenient, but the reality was it fixed leaking and the landlord was doing the right thing by maintaining the property. It was just a couple of days.

As a landlord painted a duplex with a tenant on one side minimally impacted. the other side was vacant. She was happy with the new color and fresh look of the place. We gave her a bottle of wine and a gift certificate to a local restaurant to help mitigate any inconvenience. Wa painted her side mostly when she was at work, and the empty one on weekends.

[Villanelle]

I'm currently a renter (as well as a landlord).  I expect these things will happen and don't generally have a problem with it. I do appreciate when I've given lots of notice, and even more if they are able to give me a choice of days/times, but I know sometimes that can't happen.  But generally, the more communication, the better as it helps me plan, and also makes it feel like they respect my time.

When we had ongoing maintenance issues with one place, our landlord at one point gave us a $100 gift card to a local restaurant, which we appreciated (though he was overall a shit landlord, but that's not really part of this tale).