Managing Showings with Messy Tenants

[Jeff Groudan]

Hi all,

We have a number of rentals in Houston and do a pretty good job of keeping vacancy very low by lining up new tenants during the 30 days after the previous tenant gives notice.

However, we have had a couple of recent issues with a few really messy tenants who when they gave us their 30 day notice, their units were effectively unshowable.   Which means that we had to wait until they move out and then fix the unit up before we could even begin showing the unit which almost guarantees at least 14 days vacancy or more.

While we know this is part of the cost of doing visit and do plan for vacancy, it would of course be better if we could limit the vacancy.

My question is to other landlords:  Has anyone created a custom addendum which effectively requires the tenant to have the unit in a clean and orderly condition at the time they give their 30day notice to allow for showings?   And if not, then their is some financial cost to the tenant?

The standard TX lease says they have to allow showings but showing a disaster apartment is worse than not showing it at all.

We would love to hear any best practices on this!

Thanks,

  Jeff

[Berek Dollinger]

Have you considered creating a clean virtual walkthrough?  People can walk through at their leisure online, reducing the number of showings altogether, and sidestepping the issue of messy tenants as long as you can clean to standard before the new tenant takes occupancy. 

I just noticed many places were starting to do this during COVID.