Do you let tenants know where you live?

[Ryan B.]

I want to start off by saying that I do not wear a tinfoil hat and think that everyone is watching me, but I do have a stay at home wife with two small children so their safety is important.

With that in mind, do you allow tenants to know the address of your personal residence? I live in a small town about a 1/2 hour outside of the main city (population approx. 120,000) where I do/will hold most of my investment properties.

Right now, I have tenants mail rent checks directly to our home address, but I have been thinking of changing this. Since I work in the larger city everyday, it would be no problem for me to get a P.O. Box to have the rent sent to each month.

Currently I have just higher end rentals in nice neighborhoods, but I will soon be purchasing some low income rentals. So far I have not had any situations where a tenant may have a grudge against me (knock on wood). I know with higher end rentals it is not a guarantee that I will not run into this situation, but with some of the low income rentals there will probably be a greater chance of some mad tenants.

I know it is still not difficult to track down an address if you are determined, but if they are mailing the checks to a P.O. Box in a totally different town it at least takes away the most obvious way of pointing out where my family lives.

I would appreciate everyone's thoughts on this, or if they have ran into problems with tenants knowing their address I would love to hear about it.