Pagan wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

Does anyone know if such a thing as a *cigarette* smoke detector is
manufactured and sold? A friend I know is thinking of an investment
property he wants to lease as ABSOLUTELY non-cigarette-smoke-friendly.
He's at a loss how he could end a tenant's lease if there's no way of
legally entering and proving cigarette smoking is going on in a
building in our state (PA).


Why he want's so dearly to dictate a rent-paying tenant's private activities
is a mystery to me, but then, I'm not a liberal.


Not sure what political ideology has to do with this but I do own rental
properties. Smoking is a *destructive* activity that causes damage to
the property. It is very analogous to letting the pets pee on the carpet
and the same reason why rental agreements often prohibit pets.

For a similar reason hotels have non smoking rooms because the smell of
the smoke residue is not pleasant and hard to remove and they know they
will have difficulty renting those rooms to people who don't smoke.




Anyway, the cheapest and most legally solid thing he can do is demand the
highest security deposit the law or local economy allows, and stipulate a
non-smoking clause in the lease. This way, he can gouge them on the
cleaning and possibly carpet replacement.

Gouge them? If they violated the terms of the contract (a lease is a
contract) then the person(s) causing the damage should pay. You probably
have never seen the considerable amount of work necessary to remedy the
mess made by smoking.


Your state probably allows a
walk-through by the owner prior to the tenant moving out or receiving his
deposit, and if so, smoking will be evident.

Of course, the tenant can always claim he went outside to smoke, and the
smoke somehow wafted into the building. He can also claim the smell was
there before. There's no real defense to these, so if your friend truly
doesn't want folks smoking in the building, he should buy the property,
install huge concrete blocks over all the doors and windows, and dig a mote
around the property with some alligators floating around. He won't get much
rent, but he won't have to worry about those filthy, nasty smokers.

Pagan