PropertyManagementMaven: STRANGE items that TENANTS leave behind.....

I showed a vacant property a couple of years ago... the entire place was empty and clean as the proverbial whistle...

...except for the 7 Mitchum deodorants in the linen closet. We laughed and puzzled about those deodorants for the longest time. At closing, they were gone.

At least it keeps us entertained!

Susan

We once found a French Bayonnet (my husband looked it up on the internet). Not old enough to be valuable, but interesting. I have a coffee table and a rug in my house that were left by tenants. We store some furniture and give it to other tenants who want it. A lot of tenants leave personal papers- we throw them away, but we don't go to the trouble of shredding. Not my problem.

Okay, so this is not for the faint of heart -- but one of our tenants left some frozen white plastic bags in the freezer marked "breast milk".

Wallace, we had some tenants who split up and skipped out on the rent. They left a ton of stuff behind and my husband went through some boxes. There was a set of Royal Daulton China, place settings for four. That alone covered what they owed us in rent.

I had a tenant leave everything.  I mean everything.  Bed, clothes, kitchen supplies, food, tv, stero.  The tenant left in a hurry and only took a suit case with them.

Hi Wallace, I had an abandoned space last year, went through all the notices and fillings etc and eventually was able to regain possession of the space. Inside was everything from crack pipes, bongs, cigars, drug paraphernalia etc. According to CA law, I still had to store the items for an additional 18 days before holding an auction to sell them or I guess get of rid of it. I had no idea what most of the stuff was.

I'm wondering if e-Bay would count as an "auction"?  Expensive/Valuable/NICE stuff would be more valuable/get more $$$ if sold on e-Bay rather than at a sheriff's auction.....easier to track where the items WENT and how they were disposed of and they would not have to be moved....

I usually get old tires, paint & chemicals in containers, stuff like that.... never anything of value.

Wallace, I usually consider everything that the tenant leaves behind to be "junk" without further consideration.  I did, however, enjoy a "Diet Coke" at the expense of a departing tenant last week while inventorying the things that needed to be done, but that is quite different from the "2 lines of coke on the TV that evicted tenant left" to which you make reference.   What did someone say about "the Real Thing"???   Jerry

I have a maintenance person that, while cleaning and painting one of my units, found a digital camera tucked at the back of a shelf.  I had an expensive digital camera at the time, but liked the size of that one better so I still use it today.  I have also had many other odd things found.  I had one unit where the tenants were evicted and we found drawers full of wallets, cell phones and check books/ID's (all of which had different names imprinted on them).  The garage was full of computer and stereo equipment. 

A surfboard, cleaning supplies, an elaborate "hookah" pipe, 40 old computers in a garage are some things I have been left with. -Mark

This summer during my internship in Boston, we had a resident who left two boxes of homosexual porn and a box of whips and chains

- Kat

Spaghetti on the ceiling and enough dog crap to fill two garbage cans are the common items left :)

My third day in property management I went to inspect a vacant duplex to itemize necessary maintenance. On the window sill, in full sun, was a Beta fish in a tiny plastic cup. 

I brought the fish home, introduced him to my wife, and set him up in a "fish condo" where he happily lived almost three years.