Checking that Tenants are changing Furnace Filters?

[Wendy Man]

Hi Everyone - How important is it in Mpls to make sure that tenants are changing furnace filters regularly?  And at what frequency?  I see a number of recommendations at monthly or quarterly, but don't know how much to press on this for the tenants.  (I also see sometimes that property management companies will require that tenants sign up for "benefits packages" at ~$15 per month to receive a new filter each month.  Is that a good idea?)  

[Julie Hartman]

@Wendy Man We change the filters at all of our properties quarterly and we do it ourselves so we know it's being done. Filters are cheap and our property owners appreciate that we are taking care of the HVAC system. We also use this as an excuse to get a peek inside the property. We can't go into every room but we get a general sense of what is going on in there. The bottom line is you can't trust a tenant to do it and honestly half of them don't know how to do it or even where to find the filter. The only way to know for sure is to do it yourself.