Suggestion - Buy a Vacuum!

Did you know that 87% of people living in an apartment do not own a vacuum cleaner? The great exodus of move outs has begun and it is always a surprise to me when I conduct a move out inspection. I enter with a feeling of dread nowadays, because, in fifteen years of doing these, I have learned to expect the worst and only occasionally am I pleased by the best.

When I first started in this business as an Assistant Manager for a Section 8 property and a small conventional one, I learned early on that many people have no concept of how to clean or keep a home tidy. It has nothing at all to do with money or being poor. Truly, it is sheer laziness, I have concluded. Cleaning products can be made from simple, inexpensive ingredients like baking soda!

I am fascinated by some of the remarks I hear from those Residents (truly wealthy ones who are living off either the University’s dime or their parents’) or those living off the government’s dime, thus ours’. The most common of these is, “I’m busy.”

Whaaat? You’re too busy to pick the beer bottles up off the patio, countertops and floors? You’re too busy to flush the toilet? Too busy to dispose of hairs littering the bathroom countertops – enough to make a wig – by sweeping them into the waste basket? Trash left everywhere. Clothes lying on the floors of closets. Refrigerators left unplugged with food in them … Do people not understand that this food can rot and ruin a refrigerator? I could go on and on with graphic descriptions. I am sure you can add your own scenarios. (Please do!)

I have a suggestion. Instead of giving a 42 inch flat screen TV to entice Prospects to lease, why don’t we give them a nice Hoover after they move in and/or a gift certificate to a one-time use of Maid Service to use at move out time? If they renew, arrange for the carpets to be professionally cleaned? Sure would be helpful to everyone, in my opinion.