Landlord Due Care Story
Story Time: Once upon a time....just kidding. Anyways, I was driving home tonight after picking up my kids from swimming practice and my phone rang. Of course I said very professionally, "Thank you for calling Cloud One Properties, this is Troy". On the other end of the line was one of my tenants asking if I were in her home at all today, as I am scheduling a new dishwasher installation this month. I informed her that I had not been in the home and that I always schedule an appointment within 24 hours with each tenant prior to entering the property. She is already aware of this, but wanted to make sure because somebody was in her home and she was a little concerned. Therefore, as a landlord, I executed my due care process and headed straight to the home.
After getting all of the facts, I informed her that I would be changing the codes on all of the door locks and asked her to file a police report to have on record. I use the Schlage electronic door locks and I instantly deleted all existing codes, even the current landlord code. I then allowed her to pick a new code to be added to each door, as well as a new landlord code. I had her view what I was doing and use her new code to verify it would work, and had her try her old code verifying that it did not work. Of course the landlord code was kept private. Before leaving, I had her sign the work order stating what had been done. Then I jumped in my vehicle and drove home...hoping it wouldn't ring again, since it was 8:45 PM now and I was sleepy.
Upon getting to my home office, I logged into my cloud based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program and documented everything that transpired, including what was said in the initial call. Just wanted to share the story for those that are interested in ways to keep yourself protected from lawsuits by providing due care.
Anyone else have a story?