Live Christmas Tree Policy

[Melissa Gittens]

Hi Everyone, 

Happy Holidays! Its been a while since I posted and now that we are all in the holiday spirit/season, I figured now would be the appropriate time to ask this question!

I was wondering what is your policy on tenants to having a live Christmas tree in their apartments? I do not currently have this in my lease but I wanted to start implementing a "no live Christmas tree policy" in my lease as it is a fire hazard. 

What are your thoughts on this? If you currently have this policy in your lease, what has been your experience  with tenants in this? Also am I legally allowed to have this in my lease?

Thanks, 

Melissa 

[James Wise]

Originally posted by @Melissa Gittens:

Hi Everyone, 

Happy Holidays! Its been a while since I posted and now that we are all in the holiday spirit/season, I figured now would be the appropriate time to ask this question!

I was wondering what is your policy on tenants to having a live Christmas tree in their apartments? I do not currently have this in my lease but I wanted to start implementing a "no live Christmas tree policy" in my lease as it is a fire hazard. 

What are your thoughts on this? If you currently have this policy in your lease, what has been your experience  with tenants in this? Also am I legally allowed to have this in my lease?

Thanks, 

Melissa 

 You shouldn't have any legal issues to worry about. This clause would be allowable. However, on a practical matter it's going to be tough if not impossible to enforce. Unless you plan on sitting outside of your tenants house everyday waiting to see if they come home with a tree or not. ; ) 

Throughout my time in this business running a $50M+ portfolio & dealing with 1,000's upon 1,000's of tenants I can tell you that this is something that almost none of them will remember was in the lease. To that point 90% of them probably won't read the lease thoroughly enough to even know it's in there. 

If you somehow got lucky & found out a tenant had a live tree in their unit is that really the battle you want to go down? What's the point? You start a battle & to win the battle you need to evict them, which means you lost the battle because now you have an eviction cost, lost rent, turnover cost & new leasing cost. After going through all of those costs your reward is the pleasure of placing a new tenant who also isn't going to pay attention to that rule & worse, this tenant may not even pay their rent! Then the cycle starts over again.

"The devil you know is better than the one you don't."

In summary; you need to keep your eye on the ball when dealing with tenants. They do a lot of stuff that you or I (or other more reasonable people) wouldn't do. But for your bottom line (& sanity) you need to ask yourself the following questions.

1. Are they paying rent?
2. Are they doing anything that makes your other tenants not pay their rent?

If you answer to #1 was Yes & #2 was No, leave them be. Enjoy your life, you have 1st world problems......Go buy a boat.