Snow removal or outdoor maintenence

[Karan More]

Hello Team,

I have a property in Connecticut with a single-lane shared driveway. The first floor is a 3-bedroom unit, and the second floor is a 1-bedroom unit.

How should I (as landlord) handle outdoor maintenance in this situation? Would it be better to include services such as snow removal in the rent, or should I make the tenants responsible for handling it themselves?

[Pierre Guirguis]

From an underwriting standpoint, I always treat snow and landscaping as an operating expense and include it in pro formas. It keeps things clean, consistent, and reduces tenant disputes.

For small multifamily like that, I usually recommend the landlord controls snow removal and landscaping and builds it into the numbers. Shared driveways especially can get messy if you push responsibility to tenants. If one unit doesn’t shovel and the other does, liability becomes your problem anyway. In Connecticut, snow and ice liability is real. You can either bake it into rent or charge a flat monthly utility-style fee, but I wouldn’t leave it informal.