For all the folks who are wiping rental units down between showings, are you also wiping machines down between loads of laundry?

It seems to me that the infection rate would be even more likely there especially with soiled clothes.

It seems to me that if you're going to wipe down door knobs and light switches that have been opened and turned on with glove covered hands and clean floors that have been walked on with booty covered feet, that you would be extremely nervous about washing machines and dryers

Hey NE, good to see you.

When my mom was in a nursing home for the last few years of her life, I took care of her laundry at my house. The nursing home would certainly have done her laundry for her, but, I knew, if I didn’t have the clean load of laundry to bring down to her, and the dirty load to pick up each week, I would just find some other excuse to not get there that week. Then, a week would turn into a month, and into a year with just excuses and no visits . So, I did her laundry to keep myself in the habit of going. (Two hours of driving, plus visit time, plus laundry time, Easy to come up with excuses and just pay for nursing home to do the wash....)

One day, after I had been doing this for some time, my brother, her power of attorney, got a call. She had acquired an antibiotic resistant bladder infection, very bad bug, and I was to stop doing her laundry, wash my washing machine and dryer very well with bleach, get everybody in my family checked if they had symptoms. Oi!

I always washed her loads of clothes twice anyway, (stains that we don’t maybe want to discuss.. Eww...) and, when I visited with her each week, I trimmed nails, q-tipped ears, sometimes we did facials. The whole worry/ panic over it seemed.... well...little bit of closing barn door after horse got out anyway. I did ask the staff to remember to change the towel I always set on the seat of her recliner daily, but, they were busy. ( I had asked for that to be done long before they called about the infection....) If the pink towel was on her chair when I left on Tuesday, that same pink towel was going to be there the next Tuesday, until I changed it to the purple towel...

Don’t know how often they wiped down chairs in the common areas.....

Glad your back.

Good question. It will be interesting to see the answers.

a LOT of people here don't wear masks most times ... few wear gloves and I've never seen anyone wearing booties.

I wear a mask when I'm trying to behave but other than that, I don't.

I was about to post where NE is..

NE, for what its worth, one of my tenants passed away a week ago after 2+ weeks on ventilator. One of my good tenants, I do miss him when I think of it.. It is real and people do die every day with or without Covid.

So, I pick and choose to wear masks where/when I do service calls.. Cleaning all the stuff? nah, I won't go nuts like what you described which some LLs do.. If that makes them sleep better at night, do it..

No common laundries. Well one I guess, and I never touch it, that's up to the tenants.

Since I show occupied homes, I feel it is only polite to the current resident to wipe down a doorknob and a light switch or two. The last two groups of showings, people wore masks and refrained from touching things anyway.

Well, I agree that precautions are stupid for the most part. I don't show occupied units, so if someone wants to do that in an occupied unit, then by all means do it. But if it's as bad as people think it is why would you even risk that to begin with? Wait until it's vacant.

My point is, if you're going to sanitize an empty unit due to the fear of this, why would you not be sanitizing common entry doors in common area laundry machines? It seems to me that the risk would be extremely higher there.

It's also unreasonable in a half rotted foreclosure with the ceiling caving in and dog poop all over the floor and peoples disgusting lives smeared all over the walls to go in and wipe down the north door knobs with sanitizer after the realtor shows up. So yes, it is absolutely ridiculous. I'm not talking about occupied $500,000 houses.

Don't deflect. Are we wiping down common areas of our buildings like washing machines, common entrance doors, hand rails on stairwells?

I tried to distract with my long, sorry tale of nursing home shared germs, but, didn’t work.

NE, do you have common laundries? I would say it really is up to the people living there. In fact, sending someone there specifically to clean, just brings one more person there, so, to me, best to have signs up reminding tenants, and if one feels like it, could leave a box of wipes ( which with walk away almost instantly.)

If you are wanting to make lemonade out of this, NE, and any other landlords who do flips, next to your sign about wiping things down, put up posters showing your latest flips. “Tired of shared spaces in a pandemic? For just xxx a month, you could be living in your own private home.’

Ok, one sign in one common laundry isn’t going to change the offers on your flips by much.... or could it?

JAC, it's not my responsibility to protect others. It's their responsibility to protect themselves. Except in the case of showing an occupied unit which I would go as far as saying is probably highly irresponsible during a pandemic.

Let's talk about ROOMING HOUSES with shared kitchens and bathrooms!!!!

If a landlord is requiring booties and considering temperature taking for vacant apartments, what are folks doing in rooming houses??

And there we have it folks. Fact and reason are set aside and emotion takes over.

The FACTS are that we ARE NOT sanitizing hand rails, crash bars of exit doors of large complexes, elevator floor buttons in high rise apartment buildings, washing machines, dryers, vending machines, and kitchens and baths in rooming houses, etc. between use.

So if we as landlords are not doing that in places where the likelihood of transmission is obviously higher, why do anything?

Why not? Because it's impractical and logistically IMPOSSIBLE for landlords to control or even worry about this nonsense! So why are we even considering things like booties and temp taking on empty units? Or letting the places sit empty 2 days between showings?

Even the people who show via lockbox to prevent in person contact, the prospects are touching keypads and doors knobs. Are you running to the unit and sanitizing between showings?

Justifying doing some but not all of these things does not compute in my brain.

I would tell landlords that you're absolutely wasting your time doing the stuff.

NE, the argument about signs , I believe was mine. I do agree with JAC, that if one has shared spaces, then, wipe them down if you are there. Heck, pre-Covid, I have long been known to wipe HALF of a dingy surface in a tenants’ house when I am there for a repair, just to send the message to wipe up. (yeah, I can be a jerk like that. At least I don’t clean ‘wash me’ into the grime. :-D ) I do bring a rag and bleach to wipe up after a repair now, just to reduce Busy cooties left behind.

JAC, I wouldn’t quite say it is just because of people like NE. He has admitted many times that he is not one to socialize greatly, and he’s been well aware of cleaning standards pre-Covid ( that others ignored, but now act righteous about. Not, you, JAC. I’m thinking more like people like my husband, who lets our dogs eat off his spoon.... and does dip-backs. ) I’m perhaps thinking it is also the people who think, ‘ oh, I have a mask and gloves, know how to wear them properly, I can go anywhere . I’ve got my ppp, I can travel , socialize with friends in larger groups. ‘ And then, when they get there, the social distancing rules get forgotten, the laughter gets raucous, voices get loud. But MOSTLY it is because this is a virus we haven’t encountered in humans before, and it’s been some time since the last pandemic ( flu in late 1960s? Could be wrong.....) And, it is because we LIKE to socialize, run our businesses, and interact with others. ( I do wear my mask and wash, wash, wash, btw. My husband is getting annoying with his complaining about having to wear a mask, when this thing started, he was a NUT about washing and hoarding, lol., And he still shares his spoon with our dogs! Gotta love him.)

So, blaming, in my never humble opinion, isn’t helpful in any of this. And, sorry, NE, but, if the realtor says no this, no that... well ... they get to do that.

Now is a really good time to fire up the skid steer and build a range, or a bike course. And lots of homeowners are doing backyard projects, if you’ve gotten any good with that thing, Hire out!

NE said:

"The FACTS are that we ARE NOT sanitizing hand rails" [Yes, we do, if we touch them!)

"Crash bars of exit doors" (Yes we do, if we have to touch them. We carry individually-wrapped alcohol wipes, usually used to clean glasses, and wipe gas pump handles, door knobs, elevator floor buttons. Yes, we do.)

We don't clean washing machines, dryers because that's up to the resident who is actually using and touching them. I'm not using or touching them. But if I did, I would wipe FIRST (for me) and AFTER (for the next person.)

No, I don't feel guilty at all for not doing it and I won't do it. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of doing some of it, but not all of it.

I've pulled back from this forum, in part, due to this nonsense and the overwhelming majority of people that are for it. However, the Bizzarre nature of the idea of taking temperatures and making prospects wear booties had to be addressed in my opinion. That is utter nonsense.

Especially when called out with all the other things the same people ARENT doing.

No, I don't feel guilty at all for not doing it and I won't do it. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of doing some of it, but not all of it.

I've pulled back from this forum, in part, due to this nonsense and the overwhelming majority of people that are for it. However, the Bizzarre nature of the idea of taking temperatures and making prospects wear booties had to be addressed in my opinion. That is utter nonsense.

Especially when called out with all the other things the same people ARENT doing.

NE, none of us are doctors or infectious disease experts.

Too, this virus is brand-new, apparently evolving (see the new strains coming in from Europe) and when it first started, NOTHING was known about it. So forgive us if we are not perfectly combating the plague following every possible cleaning protocol out there.

But while brushing AND flossing AND visiting the dentist twice a year is the BEST protocol for tooth health, BRUSHING alone is better than nothing, would you agree? Add in the flossing - well two out of three ain't bad, to quote the great Meat Loaf.

Wearing a mask IS effective, if both parties involved in a closer transaction wear one. If neither does, you might as well kiss in some circumstances. Same difference.

Washing your hands IS effective, as the virus's "skin" breaks down with soap & water and is washed away down the drain. Alcohol gel is a distant second, but better than nothing.

Social distancing IS effective. We all know how far the droplets from a sneeze or a cough travel.

Refraining from touching common items -door knobs, elevator buttons, crash-bars, gas pumps - all makes sense. Why not be careful when doing these things? It's not that hard.

WMH, in this thread the only thing I am focused on here is a landlord sanitizing, taking temps and booty wearing.

And ultimately what's our responsibility? Which I think is next to ZERO except if you show and occupied unit and even that I'm skeptical about.

Booty wearing is polite: service people have been doing it for eons when entering customer's homes. But I don't bother, because I don't think the virus is transmitted by the bottom of my shoe.

Sanitizing before and after a showing of common touch points is again, simply polite. Not hard to do, can't hurt.

Taking temps? I haven't heard of the general public going that far in personal interactions. You didn't mention that in your OP.

I believe realtors in Pennsylvania are required to perform certain sanitizing steps and also required to abide by directives xyz along with getting a release signed. Okay, if I were a realtor I'd do that too because I would not risk my license.

I think the bigger issue is one directive for everyone. NE and I both live in rural areas. The numbers of people here, the number of people in close proximity creating a crowd, the places that have mass amounts of public contact are different than down town NY, Chicago, Miami, etc.

I visualize a NYC sidewalk teeming with foot traffic. In my little town, I'd bet other than little kids no more than 50 people stroll down the main street daily ... and that's because they're taking a walk after supper. Our public mass transportation consists of a "short bus" that comes through twice a day. Businesses don't have lobbies with 100 people milling about waiting for a common elevator.

Nicole, now there I agree. Geography and population differs all over the place, all over the US. But those of us that in, say, tourist destinations like the beach, have two things going against us from the start:

1) We are small, rural, isolated 3/4ths of the year. Then comes the great Wildebeest migration of tourists, mostly from Covid hot spots like NY, NJ, CT, OH, PA...and the attitude of too many are: "I'm on vacation, dammit. Don't try to tell ME what to do..." and it goes downhill from there. Cases spike..

2) We are small, rural, isolated 3/4ths of the year. But we have a large elder population that live here part of the year and travel the world the rest - usually to get away from the tourists.

‘ the great wildebeest migration of tourists...’

This is going to have me chuckling all day,

Very apt description. And spot-on assessments.

I would put wipes and sanitizer in the laundry room and a sign reminding people to sanitize before touching buttons etc on the machines. The virus is easily transferred mouth to mouth while talking in close proximity. It's a lot. It goes right into the back of the throat with the talking movements of tongue and larynx. Now with the AC on everywhere it can live longer in air from a sneeze or cough or a loudmouth supermarket owner who refuses to wear a mask in his store. The air is cool and winter like and dry.

Some does remain on machines. It was found on metal objects and people took the time to measure it and how long it lives there so don't tell me that has changed because someone has an agenda.

JAC, if cases are up in your area, you better start sanitizing all your machines and common door knobs. Signs aren't cutting it.

Sisco thanks. I'm like Scarface's Tony Montana of Covid to a lot of people: "You don't have the guts to be what you want to be. You need people like me, so you can point your }^Ł}^# fingers and say THERE, THATS THE BAD GUY!" lol

JAC, if cases are up in your area, you better start sanitizing all your machines and common door knobs. Signs aren't cutting it.

Sisco thanks. I'm like Scarface's Tony Montana of Covid to a lot of people: "You don't have the guts to be what you want to be. You need people like me, so you can point your }^Ł}^# fingers and say THERE, THATS THE BAD GUY!" lol

I don't personally do that practice..... increasing cleaning runs makes sense though.