Should Smoking Be Allowed? Should you allow smoking in apartments that you own or manage? Unless you are having trouble keeping your units leased, the usual answer is no. The problems with smoking in apartments are: • Smoking in apartments increases your liability problems. There is always the potential for a smoker causing a fire in the unit and not only does this pose a property risk, it also creates the potential for injury to your tenants or their guests • Smoking also increases your costs. Smoking requires a more extensive cleaning and may even increase your insurance costs. A strong and en-
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forced no-smoking policy will reduce those costs. • Smoking can result in fewer potential new tenants. The smell associated with smoking in the unit will be clearly noticeable to potential new tenants. It is difficult to remove that smell in the short downtime between tenants, and as a result will limit your potential tenants to those that already smoke. All of this, of course, is predicated on the fact that in many areas of the country there are fewer and fewer potential renters that currently smoke. If your units are in an area where there are a substantial number of smokers, or
if your units appeal to a demographic that includes a large number of smokers, you will have to take that into consideration when you make the decision whether or not to accept smokers. It all depends on your ability to attract renters and keep your vacancy rate as low as possible. If you have several units within the property, an alternative can be to designate some units as smoke free and depending on the flow of new tenants, assign those units to tenants that do not smoke. All in all, however, smoking in apartments should be as infrequent as you can make it. p
Apartment Market Digital • Fall 2012
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