Rental Fireplaces & Inspecting a Foreclosure Acquired Fireplace

[Dustin DuFault]

Team BP,

Just had this come up with one of my tenants. In retrospect I should have foreseen this coming... but missed it. I acquired a property last year via foreclosure. It required some renovations due to deferred maintenance / vacancy, but is now up and running as a rental property. For reference this is the property I am working on financing following the foreclosure acquisition, if you've seen any of my recent posts.

At any rate the property has a fireplace and the tenant contacted me to find out if she would be able to use it. I appreciated how conscientious a tenant she was for inquiring first!! Then I let her know this would take some research on my part.

Anyone have any ideas on how to get the fireplace inspected? Is it common practice to allow fires in rental properties?? This seems dangerous to me at best... but in this particular case I didn't address it in the lease... so I'd feel bad about not allowing it after the fact.

For reference the fireplace is listed on the property appraisers site as a 'pre-fab' model. It looks like a regular fireplace to me, but I'm imagining some flimsy sheet-metal style chimney or something :-/

Thoughts?

-Dustin

[Michaela G.]

I personally describe my fireplaces as 'decorative fireplace' , that can't be used.

I have always dealt with very old houses, so there are chimneys where the mortar between the bricks is often disintegrated and needs to be lined. What if they don't open the flue etc? Too many potential things can go wrong.

But people loved even just having a decorative fireplace and mantle, as that gives character to a home