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?
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.
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.
The LL should handle. You have serious liability if walking surfaces are not cleared/deiced timely after snow/ice. Groundskeeping also, for a multi-unit, should be performed by LL. Again liability is an issue. What if your clown of a Tenant inadvertently aims the discharge chute toward your windows, or toward another Tenant or Guest entering or exiting the building? Also, you need to account for the "value" of their work in either case, and potentially 1099 them at tax time. Of course, that also may put you in the position of an employer, in which case you need Worker's Comp. Better to simply hire a licensed and insured Contractor.
With a shared driveway in Connecticut, it’s usually cleaner if the landlord handles snow removal.
If you leave it to tenants, you risk confusion (“I thought they were doing it”), uneven clearing, and potential liability if someone slips. Shared access areas are generally better treated as landlord-controlled.
Most owners either build the average plowing cost into the rent or contract it separately and manage it directly. In a duplex with common space, consistency and liability control usually outweigh the small savings of shifting it to tenants.
@Karan More - we only have single family homes do their own snow and landscaping. There is a line in life that goes, "If more than one person is responsible for something, no one is responsible for anything." DM if you would like to discuss more.