A Basement Water Alarm That Can Alert You To Water In The Basement Of A Rental

If you have a rental home, you have to be proactive to protect your investment. You can’t rely on tenants to tell you when something is up. Too many times, if it doesn’t pertain to them, they won’t inform you of problems at your rental house. Many people have basement water alarms and sensors that alert them to water in their basements. These work perfectly, because they get alerted, and then fix the problem and save their belongings. These don’t work as well for landlords, because sometimes tenants will avoid disclosing issues in your home in order to prevent you from stopping in for a visit.

Why Do Tenants Fail To Inform Landlords Of Serious Problems

Tenants sometime won’t alert you to a problem that doesn’t pertain to them, because they want to enjoy a higher level of privacy, as if they owned the home themselves. Of course, unlike if they owned the home themselves, they don’t care about long term damage that can be caused by neglecting to fix a problem in a timely manner.

Sometimes, tenants don’t want you to know that they have a new roommate they didn’t tell you about. Sometimes, they have a pet in your rental home that they either didn’t want to tell you about, aren’t allowed to have, or didn’t want to pay a pet deposit fee over. Sometimes they may have illegal drugs inside your house. Sometimes, they just don’t want you to know that they painted a wall.

At any rate, if your rental home has water in the basement, you need to know about it.

Smart Alarm for Water

You can get smart alarms that use wifi to alert you to water in the basement of your rental home. As an amenity, you can provide the tenants with WiFi and then tap into this WiFi with your smart alarm. Consider something like the iHome iSB02 Battery Powered WI-FI Dual Leak Sensor. It’s battery powered, so the tenants can’t complain that it’s using their power, if you don’t have a separate meter for your own needs on the home. You will want to ensure that the lease indicates that these alarms must remain undisturbed, and that tenants who damage the alarms or cause them to become inactive are responsible financially for any damage caused by water that was unable to be detected.

These alarms will send you an email or a text automatically any time water is detected in your rental home. Each alarm and sensor costs only about $30, so they are a totally worthwhile investment.

Reasons Basements Flood

Obviously, there are plenty of causes of water in basements. Once you detect water, you will need to address the issue. Perhaps the sump pump failed, perhaps there is a crack in the foundation. Perhaps there is just too much water around the foundation caused by improperly extended gutter downspouts or clogged gutters. A worse situation would be a sewer line back up or a frozen hose bibb, but knowing about these issues early is always better!

Are You Looking for a Hard Money Loan to Flip a House Or Buy A Rental Property?

Paces Funding is a hard money lender offering hard money loans to purchase and renovate non-owner occupied residential and commercial properties throughout the Atlanta, Nashville, Florida, or the North and South Carolina metropolitan areas. Our application process for hard money loans is easy. Just fill out this very simple online form and you will be contacted shortly. Unlike other lenders, the window between applying and funding is very small. We have funded properties in as a little as one day, but typically funding hard money loans takes about seven to ten days.

Call us at 404-814-1644 or contact us online to find out whether you might qualify for this type of funding. In the meantime, check to ensure that you meet our loan criteria. Our loan amounts can be up to 65 percent of the after-repaired value of the collateral—and if you use the loan for renovation or construction, the loan amount can be based on the collateral’s improved value.