Allow Smokers In Your Apartments?

[Nate Bell]

I’ve purchased an abandoned adult car home and am going to be converting it into eight 1+1 apartments. Cheap property, huge rehab costs. It’s in a smoker-friendly state and the units will be about $550/month not including utilities. My question is this- should I start out trying to get non-smoker tenants? How long did you hold out before you acquiesced? Does it make a difference if I put smokers upstairs and non-smokers downstairs. In a perfect world, I’d not allow it. It’s hard to tell what would happen long term- will non-smokers ultimately not want to live there because smokers are in the building, eventually converting it to all-smokers and destroying my investment?

[Account Closed]

I don’t allow smoking in any of my buildings.  I have a service charge if I inspect and it smells like smoke or proof of smoking then I charge them and give a written warning. If they don’t stop then they get evicted.  When I took over the property it cost over 5,000 to remove the smells and clean the unit and it was just a tiny 750 square foot unit.