Hi, there! Joe White here from Grow Property Management, your trusted property management company in Philadelphia.
I just finished back-to-back conversations with a prospective property owner, and honestly, it was one of those situations where I actively tried to dissuade him from using our services. That’s not something I do lightly, but it became clear that we were fundamentally misaligned. I kept explaining our policy around a specific issue, and he kept rejecting it. Over and over, I tried to be very clear and respectful; “I understand why you want this, but it’s simply not something our company offers or believes is in the best interest of the investment.” Eventually, it felt obvious that this wouldn’t be a good working relationship, so I said as much. Even then, he hedged and said he still wanted to work with us.
The core issue was this, he owns a rental property that currently has a tenant in place. That tenant is scheduled to move out in February. The owner wants to begin marketing the property immediately, while the tenant is still living there, in order to line up a replacement tenant before the unit becomes vacant. On the surface, that makes perfect sense. Vacancy is incredibly expensive, and no landlord wants to deal with it.
To put some numbers behind that, the median rental asking price for properties we manage translates to a vacancy cost of over $78 per day for the owner. That’s the middle of our portfolio, not the high end. When you break that down, it adds up very quickly. Ten unnecessary days of vacancy can easily cost $780. A month of vacancy can be thousands of dollars. So yes, I completely understand why an owner would want to avoid even a single day of downtime.
At the time of this conversation, it was early January, and the property wouldn’t be vacant until March 1st. That’s a long runway. In theory, that’s plenty of time to market the property, find a tenant, and schedule a seamless transition where one tenant moves out and the next one moves in immediately. From a purely financial standpoint, it sounds ideal.
But here’s where my perspective differs, and I believe it’s because my job is to protect the investment long-term, not just optimize for the next 30 days. Based on my experience owning and operating a property management company since 2008, I believe that marketing and leasing a property while it is still occupied often causes more harm than good. Many experienced property managers agree with this, because we’ve seen the downstream consequences.
First, there’s the fairness issue for the existing tenant. Imagine paying rent on a home and being required to allow strangers to walk through your living space. People are opening closets, peering into rooms, judging the condition of a place that is still very much someone’s home. That alone creates tension and discomfort, and it’s not an environment that leads to cooperation or goodwill.
But beyond that, there’s a much bigger problem: prospective tenants cannot truly see the condition of the property while it’s occupied. Furniture hides defects. Belongings obscure damage. A couch pushed up against a wall might be concealing scratches, scuffs, or even gouges that nobody notices, not even the current tenant. That tenant may be unknowingly causing damage every time they sit down, and it remains hidden until move-out.
Now imagine this scenario: a new tenant views the property, likes it, and agrees to rent it. They’ve seen the unit with furniture in place and assume the walls are in good condition. The current tenant moves out today, and the new tenant moves in tomorrow. When do we inspect the property? When do we properly assess damage? When do we decide whether something needs to be repaired, touched up, or fully replaced?
Let’s say we finally see that wall after move-out and notice a noticeable mark where the couch was. Now we have to make a decision quickly. Ideally, painting the entire wall would make it perfect. But full repainting costs more money and takes more time. Often, the recommendation we make to owners is to do a touch-up instead.
Here’s the reality of touch-up paint: it is almost never perfect. Even if you have the original paint, the conditions are different. The paint is no longer new. It’s been sitting in a can. It’s stirred differently. It’s applied with a different tool. Rollers have nap, and nap creates stipple, those tiny bumps you see when you look closely at a wall. If the nap doesn’t match exactly, or if you’re layering new paint over old, the texture will be different. Even with the same nap, touching up can double the texture in one spot. The result is a wall that looks “almost” right, but not quite.
Now think about this from the incoming tenant’s perspective. They never saw that wall uncovered. They never agreed to visible touch-ups. They assumed, reasonably, that the wall would be in good condition. And legally and practically, there’s a concept of “as-is” that applies here. A tenant agrees to take a property as-is for conditions they could have reasonably seen or expected. Appliances are a good example. A tenant doesn’t have to test the microwave or HVAC system during a showing. A reasonable person assumes those things work, so they legally should work.
But hidden damage is different. A reasonable person cannot be expected to agree to defects they couldn’t see. So now we’re introducing ambiguity, dissatisfaction, and potential liability over something that could have been addressed properly if the unit were vacant.
And this isn’t limited to cosmetic issues. One of the most common dynamics we see is deferred maintenance. Tenants are required by lease to report maintenance issues immediately, but sometimes they don’t. They live with a broken stove knob, a malfunctioning toilet, or some other issue that never makes it onto our radar. When the tenant moves out, we discover these problems. Regardless of who pays for the repair, the property must be fixed before a new tenant moves in. You cannot ethically or legally move a tenant into a broken home.
If a new tenant moves in and immediately starts discovering problems, the relationship is damaged from day one. They don’t see us as a professional company that cares about the property. They see a landlord or management company that handed them a subpar home. That perception matters.
We want to set expectations from the beginning. When we deliver a clean, well-maintained, fully repaired property, we’re sending a message: this is how we take care of our homes, and this is how we expect you to take care of it too. Tenants tend to rise or fall to the standard that’s set for them. A junky, poorly presented property invites junky behavior. A well-maintained home encourages respect and care.
This is why our policy exists. It’s not because we don’t understand vacancy costs. It’s not because we’re ignoring the owner’s financial concerns. It’s because we’ve seen how often pre-leasing occupied properties leads to conflict, dissatisfaction, and long-term damage, to both the tenant relationship and the investment itself.
I know many landlords disagree with this approach, and that’s fine. Different strategies work for different people. In fact, some of the most valuable insights come from those disagreements. The real value of these discussions often comes from the comments, other landlords and property managers sharing their experiences and perspectives.
At the end of the day, I’m just a Philadelphia-based property management company owner doing my best to answer rental property investing questions honestly, based on years of experience. My goal is always to protect the investment, reduce liability, and create stable, long-term tenant relationships, even when that means advising against something that looks good on paper in the short term.
As always, happy rental property investing.
