Include lawn care/leaf pick up/weed picking in rental price?

Question

Hello,

As my title states I am wondering how any of you handle lawn care, fall leaf pick up, and weed picking for your single family home rentals? My rental has a fairly big yard 0.50 acres and I want to make sure it is maintained well.

For those of you that do include lawn services in your rental pricing how often does the service cut the lawn and pick weeds? Assuming only 1-2 lead pickups for the fall I would imagine.

Any insight would be helpful! Thanks

Taylor Dasch · Answer

If you want to make sure it is maintained well, I would put the cost into the rent and then get it maintained. I wouldnt expect a tenant to take real good care of the grass and leaves.

Alecia Loveless · Answer

@Mike Birney My contractor also has a lawn maintenance/snow removal company. He takes care of all my multis. I have one SFH that so far I have given the tenants the option of taking care of the lawn or having the service do it but it is written in the lease that if it is not up to my standard I will get it done and charge the tenants.

So far both tenants over 3 years have opted to maintain the lawn. Neither had mowers so I said in April I will give you a $200 rent credit you can use to help buy a mower with. Both bought a mower. The second, current tenant came back in May and asked for a small credit to help him buy a weed whacker so I gave him a $100 credit.

The first tenant mowed ever 10 days and the yard looked great. We had been mowing ever 2 weeks the summer before during renovations and by 14 days it looked shabby most of the time. The second tenant mows and weed whacks every Saturday morning. He has built a beautiful fire pit, 3 raised beds, a bricked In flower bed, and done some other landscaping to improve the gardens.

I think this decision is up to you. If you want to know for sure the yard is being mowed and maintained properly hire it out.

All of my properties are within about a 40 mile radius so once a week I take 2.5 hours and drive around to check all of them to make sure everything is done correctly. The yards have been mowed, there’s no trash anywhere, hallways don’t need to be cleaned etc. this guarantees if my tenants weren’t mowing I’d know about it right away.

Jim Reynante · Answer

I am thinking that I am in the minority, for me I expect the landscaping of my rentals to be well groomed. So I hire professional gardeners to take of my properties. Not the neighborhood kid, not someone's friend of a relative, etc.

My gardeners are at my properties 1 x week, rain or shine (doesn't rain too often in So Cal). The cost varies depending on the lot size and complexity (small grass patch vs botanical garden.)

For the extra money (the tenant pays half), I get consistency and some good curb appeal. It's worth it to me, but I understand that many landlords don't want to hire a lawn service and expect their tenants to do a decent job of maintaining their property.

Include lawn care/leaf pick up/weed picking in rental price?

Include lawn care/leaf pick up/weed picking in rental price?

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