Do you have fruit or nut trees at your STR?

Question

One of my houses has a big pecan tree in the front yard. It's a 3 story house, and the pecan tree is taller than the house. Another house has a black walnut tree in the back yard. My lawn mowing guy was complaining about all the walnuts messing up his mower. So my tenant at the house filled up 5 milk crates worth of the walnuts and gave them to us. He said they also come in handy to throw at stray dogs. Some stray dog was barking at me when I was loading up the milk crates. I should have thrown a walnut at it. But it was a pit bull.

Let's hear your story.

Julie McCoy · Answer

At my STR in California I have a lime tree, apple tree, plum tree, a few orange trees, a tangerine tree, pomegranate tree, lemon tree, black walnut tree, and to top it all off some dewberries in the backyard!  The previous owner was a green thumb - I just try to keep it all alive.  LOL

Paul Sandhu · Answer

Post up your nuts @Ken Latchers

Paul Sandhu · Answer

Here is a picture of my nuts:

Kevin Lefeuvre · Answer

Got a huge avocado tree in one property. Hundreds, twice a year. Most guests don't know they don't ripen on the tree. They touch, see they're too hard and leave them for us, according to one guest. I should look into selling them. Friends and family got enough :-)

Neal Collins · Answer

Your conventional landlord here would probably look at the potential fruit/nut droppings as a mess and want to cut down the tree. I'd even argue that some of our landlords colleagues would rather cut down all the trees on their property. I get it--we've dealt with branches down, trees falling on houses, and rotting fruit that has caused a mess.

Most of our urban centers are loosing their tree canopies. When you remove these resources simply because of the convenience factor you chip away at a community's resiliency. I'd implore people to take the extra effort to simply think a bit more out of the box before they chop.

Andrew Faukner · Answer

@Paul Sandhu No offense taken Paul. We do have quite the variety of fruits and nuts in California, but that's what keeps life fun, and interesting. So when things get boring in Kansas, come pay us a visit. ;-)

Paul Sandhu · Answer

@Andrew Faukner  Thanks.  I don't mean to disrespect your post or your state, but it confirms what I've suspected all along.  Cali is full of fruits and nuts.

Andrew Faukner · Answer

In California there is a tax break for planting fruit or nut trees on your property, although it may only be for the tax value of the trees. Here is a link to a Bigger Pockets discussion of the tax break: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/25/topics/508275-fruit-tree-tax-exemption?page=1#p3899883

John D. · Answer

I've got lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit trees on some of our rentals.  Existing properties, I stick to one fruit tree per property (some guests notice and appreciate them), in a spot on the grounds where fallen fruit isn't close to the house or main hang areas, so if there's rotting fruit between the gardener coming it's not going to bother anyone.Our latest property has a dozen plus assorted fruit trees.  While I probably should remove most/all of them, I'm having a hard time pulling the trigger......I also have Date Palms on some of our properties, but we cut the date fruit bunches off at the growth point so they do not produce dates.  In addition to the headache of fallen dates, in order to properly protect the dates they need to be bagged for a few months a year, and harvested.....the bags look odd, the maintenance and harvesting takes time that needs to be coordinated in between guest stays, and there's not much money in it.....so we simply cut the bunches so they do not re-grow to remove that part of complexity from the landscaping.

Sylvia B. · Answer

We purchased a house this year that one could tell the original owners/builders in the 90's thought "out of the box". It was positioned to avoid cutting as many black walnuts as possible. Of the 8 trees we had removed, only one was a safe distance from the house, and it was directly in front of the garage! They built the driveway at a very awkward angle in order to keep it. We removed it and straightened the drive. One of the trees we removed was almost 4 feet in diameter at the base, and only 6 feet from the house.

Do you have fruit or nut trees at your STR?

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