Landlord Guide: Tenant Death and Hoarding

First 24 hours after a tenant death

1. Let the authorities finish. Police and the coroner control the unit until release. Do not enter beyond securing the property if they ask you to.
2. Secure the unit. Lock up, note who holds keys, and prevent access by anyone, including well meaning relatives, until you know the position. Belongings belong to the estate.
3. Notify your insurer. Open the claim early; the file you build from here is what gets the cleanup paid.
4. Be careful with the family. One named contact, practical information, no discussion of costs or tenancy consequences at the first conversation. The family will remember how this was handled.

The cleanup itself

Engage a professional crew; the duty to the next tenant is a genuinely clean unit, verified by testing, not a wiped one. The crew's scope depends on discovery time, as the timeline guide explains. You should receive a written scope and quote, then an itemised invoice, waste manifests, and on remediation work, clearance results. That bundle is your insurance evidence and your answer if a future tenant ever asks what was done. The service routes are death cleanup and, for volume cases, hoarding cleanup; managers will find the vendor view on the property managers page.

Belongings and the estate

The deceased's property belongs to their estate. Do not dispose of belongings on a family's verbal say so in the first days; get instructions from the executor or next of kin in writing, store what must be stored, and let the crew set aside personal effects during cleaning. Disputes about belongings are the commonest source of landlord grief in these cases; paper prevents them.

Hoarding discovered in a tenancy

With a living tenant, your tools are the lease, local code, and a plan the tenant can survive: cited hazards first, staged clearing, agreed sorting, as set out in hoarding cleanup: where to start. At turnover, with the unit empty, the work is the safety pass, volume removal, disinfection and a repair list. Either way, document condition with photographs before work begins.

Disclosure and re-letting

Disclosure duties after a death on the property vary by state: some require telling prospective tenants about a death within a defined number of years; others require honesty only when asked; a few are silent. Know your state's position before marketing the unit. The remediation documentation matters either way: it converts a rumour into a restored, tested property. Our guide on selling a house after a death covers the sale side of the same question.

Questions families ask us