Posts Tagged ‘tenant privacy’

Don’t Make This Mistake, If You Want to Keep Good Tenants

Saturday, September 1st, 2012

Where’s the problem?

The issue of respecting tenants’ privacy is really close to my heart, based on a perplexing experience that my wife, Angy, and I had.

Shorty after we were married, Angy and I were experiencing marital bliss on a our honeymoon in Mexico. We rented a house near the beach, and after a few days we mentioned to the landlord that the kitchen sink was draining too slowly.

The next day was Saturday, and we still in bed that morning. Angy was sleeping and Terry was reading The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, when we heard the back door opening. It sounded like two people were entering.

A happy Spongebob-ish called out, “We’re here to fix the sink.”

Terry yelled, “Hey, why are you guys here so early? We’re still in bed.”

The Spongebob voice said, “Sorry, we have a tight schedule to keep. It’s not easy being a handyman you know.”

“What did he say?” whispered Angy.

“He said its not easy being a handyman.”

“Well, that’s his problem isn’t it?”

“I would have thought so.”

Terry shouted out, “Can you guys come back later? We’re not prepared right now. And if you could avoid unloading your burdens on us we’d really appreciate it.”

“Come on,” said the cheerful voice, “we can fix this pipe in two shakes.” We could hear random tools dropping on the floor and bouncing around, followed by an exclamation of “Oops.”

“And we are really good guys. I read poetry and I’m good at carrying on interesting conversations.”

“And, I write novels,” the other one with a goofy, Patrick-ish voice chimed in, “although I haven’t had any published yet.”

Objections to the contrary, we had our sink fixed and the handymen did turn out to be pretty good guys. They became our friends over the course of our stay.

Although this was just a light-hearted incident, it was also an example of violation of tenants’ privacy. Not only is it wrong from a courtesy perspective, but it is also against the law to enter the premises without the tenant’s permission, except in an emergency.

The more you can make the tenants feel it is their home, like keeping a handyman poet and a Pulitzer Prize wannabe from showing up unannounced to their private living space, the better your relationship with them will be.