Rental houses, apartments and managed buildings
For landlords and property managers
A tenant has died, or you have opened a unit and found something you were not prepared for. Before anyone on your payroll goes in with gloves, read this.
Phone answered 24/7, day and night
The first 48 hours
Confirm the unit is released
If police or the Medical Examiner attended, ask the officer whether you may enter. Get the report number while you are at it; your insurer will want it.
Lock it and post nothing
Change or secure the lock if keys are unaccounted for. Other tenants are owed quiet, not an explanation on the door.
Call your insurer
Do it before any work. Ask whether an adjuster needs to see the unit and whether lost rent during the cleanup is part of your coverage.
Reach the family
The belongings inside are the tenant's, or now their estate's. Do not clear them on your own judgment; agree in writing with the next of kin, or take advice from your attorney if nobody can be found.
Bring in a registered company
For blood or body fluids, California wants a firm registered with the state health department (check the name here).
Your maintenance staff
Why this is not a job for the handyman
An employee sent to clean blood is occupationally exposed, in the words of Cal/OSHA's section 5193. The employer then owes that worker a written exposure control plan, training, protective equipment at no charge to the worker and the offer of hepatitis B vaccination.
Few small landlords have any of that. A specialist company does, and it also has somewhere lawful to take the waste. A dumpster behind the building is not that place.
Things that come up in multi-unit buildings
The unit below
Fluids travel down. Ask the company to check the ceiling underneath, and warn that tenant a contractor may knock.
Smell in the corridor
Odor moves through gaps under doors and shared ventilation. The company can seal the doorway while it works.
Timing
Tell the company about quiet hours, gate codes and where a van may park, so the work draws as little notice as possible.
Renting it again
What you must tell the next tenant
California Civil Code section 1710.2 deals with deaths on a property. An owner or agent is not required to disclose a death that happened more than three years before the new tenant or buyer makes their offer. Inside three years, the protection does not apply.
The same section says something else that matters: it does not protect an owner who gives a false answer when a prospective tenant asks directly about deaths on the property. It also says an occupant's HIV status is not something to be disclosed. For anything beyond that, ask your attorney or your local apartment association.
Keep on file
- The report number and the date the unit was released to you.
- Photographs before and after, and the company's scope, invoice and waste paperwork.
- Your written agreement with the family about belongings.
- Notes of what you told neighboring tenants and when.
One call from the manager's office
Have the address, the type of unit and the report number to hand. The independent company you reach will ask about access and say how soon it could look at the unit.
Talk it over with a cleanup company
Begin wherever you like. The story does not have to come out in order, and you may hang up whenever you want.
Call (805) 946-0050Phone answered 24/7, day and night
Your call may be recorded. Read how we are paid and what we keep.