Hi, there! Joe White here from Grow Property Management, your trusted property management company in Philadelphia.
A question from Jacqueline is inquiring on who’s responsible for a broken window in one of her rental properties. Apparently, the tenant’s window was vandalized. Now, this might come as a surprise, but in most cases like this, we actually consider the tenant responsible. When it comes to vandalism or break-ins, our experience has shown that it’s often tenant-related – over 75% of home break-ins are by someone the resident knows. It could be a friend, a neighbor, even a housekeeper. Since we can’t really know the backstory – whether it was a personal retaliation or something related to the tenant’s actions – we typically place responsibility on the person occupying and using the space, which is the tenant.
That being said, there’s an exception that comes to mind. We had a property here in Philadelphia that wasn’t a rental – we were actually selling it, and I was representing the seller. There was a drive-by shooting in a very nice neighborhood, and a bullet went through the property, actually lodging into the wall. In that situation, it was clearly a random act that affected multiple homes. So in cases like that, where there’s solid evidence the event was random and had nothing to do with the tenant, we’d see it as a property owner’s responsibility.
It’s similar to how we approach pest control. Generally, pest issues are a tenant responsibility, based on the idea that tenants bring in the pests through food habits or other factors. But we manage properties in places like the Italian Market here in Philly – an area full of restaurants and food businesses. In that case, we treat pest control more as a property issue, because the environment itself contributes to the problem.
So the bottom line is: unless there’s clear evidence the issue was unrelated to the tenant, like a completely random act or something affecting multiple properties, we typically consider things like vandalism or break-ins a tenant responsibility. Just doing my best to answer your rental property investing questions from the perspective of someone deep in the Philadelphia property management game.
As always, happy rental property investing!
