How To Prevent Your Tenants From Smoking Indoors

When renting your property longterm, it is difficult to discover if your tenant has been smoking in your property until after they have moved out. And whether your property is large or small, it will sustain damage if indoor smoking occurs. Long-term damage from indoor smoking is not only costly to repair, but will cost you time and potentially lost future revenue. While this may be a difficult situation to prevent, it is not impossible. So, let’s look at out how to prevent indoor smoking in your property.

Why you should prevent indoor smoking in your property

Whether the property you manage is a house or an apartment, it is important to protect your property from indoor smoking. Indoor smoking from cigarettes and marijuana overtime causes damage to your walls, floors, furniture and more. The smell alone will stick to everything you own, and is more difficult and expensive to remove the longer it goes on. On average, the cost for repairing long-term smoking damage can cost anywhere between $200 – $1,000. And that is only for repairs. It also takes time to make these repairs, which can delay future tenants from moving in and costing you future revenue. The time you will have to spend repainting the walls, replacing curtains, linens, and more will cause your property to be out of commission longer than you might like.

Property check-ins to prevent indoor smoking

If you suspect your tenant is smoking inside of your property, consider dropping by now and then to check in on your property. Of course, you should always notify your tenants before coming by your property. However, when you do check-in you can take the opportunity to notice any smells of cigarettes, potential burns or ashes. Drop ins may help you find out if your guests are smoking indoors, but this can be hard to prove when looking to claim a damage deposit. Property drop-ins are also difficult to do, especially depending on your availability and willingness from your tenants. Additionally, If you plan a visit to check for evidence of indoor smoking, it is possible your tenants clean and hide away any immediately visible damage prior to your arrival. While it is your property and you are more than allowed to check-in, frequent property check-ins will likely cultivate a negative relationship with your tenants.

Look for evidence

If you are able to, either through a quick visit or by living proximity, check for evidence of indoor smoking. This evidence could be in the form of smells, burns, ashes or cigarette butts. As a property manager, you likely charged a security deposit to your tenants. If you find evidence of indoor smoking, you have the right to hold onto some, if not all, of the security deposit. Finding the evidence can also be challenging. This will depend on how close you live to your rental property. And, how often you have the opportunity to check for evidence. Even if you do get the opportunity to regularly check for evidence, it could be difficult to find. This is because the damages may be in less obvious spots that require a closer look to find. This is much more difficult to do when conducting a quick property check-in.

Consider installing a smoke monitoring device

The best solution to preventing your tenants from smoking in your property is to install an indoor smoking monitor. While there are a few different ones available, the best one for a well rounded monitoring system is Alertify. Alertify is a small room monitoring device which detects indoor smoking, excessive noise, occupancy levels and so much more. Once you have installed Alertify, if the device detects indoor smoking on your property, you will receive a notification in real-time. Alertify’s real-time notifications allow property managers to intervene before potential damages occur. With Alertify, property managers also have access to the Alertify dashboard. The Alertify dashboard is where you can view live and histoircal data of the smoke levels in your property.

The large problem with proving indoor smoking is a lack of evidence. However, Alertify also has a solution to that. At the end of every tenant violation, such as indoor smoking, property managers will receive an end of violation notification and an after-incident report. The after-incident reports include detailed information on the duration and peak of the violation. The report also includes basic tenant information and your property’s information. Alertify’s after-incident reports act as documentary evidence of indoor smoking. This evidence can be used to prove indoor smoking and hang onto security deposits. Prevent indoor smoking in your properties with Alertify, today.