Smoking and tenant issues

[Susan Clark]

I have a three family home that has been a challenge and just as I think I’ve stabilized it I’m faced with an upstairs tenant who complains of overwhelming cigarette smoke filtering into her apartment causing extreme headaches to them as they now are work from home employees. My leases do say non smoking units but one family I particularly  has never abided by this and makes excuses or denys allegations. What can I do, if anything?

[Sean McKee]

@Susan Clark- I have had this happen quite a few times. It's the unfortunate headache of multi-family investing. What I do normally is both email and mail a smoking violation letter. It's sternly worded about the continued consequences of smoking. That usually stops the behavior. Stuff in writing seems to get the point across better than phone calls/texts

If that doesn't work, you should announce a building wide inspection and that anyone caught smoking will be fined(if your lease allows that) and their lease potentially terminated.

If they still aren't cooperating after that, then I'm sorry you have a pretty bad tenant.  You will have to evict them. Smoking can cause a lot of damage. I had a tenant who managed not to get caught smoking in just one of the bedrooms for a few months. It took weeks for the smell to "mostly" go away.