Rental & Student Property Water Damage in Tuscaloosa County

Tuscaloosa's rental market is measured in tens of thousands of student beds, and most of them empty between May and August. Purpose-built blocks near the campus, converted houses through Pinehurst and College Park, duplexes in the West End and Holt, and single-family rentals out toward Cottondale all sit unoccupied for stretches long enough for a small failure to become a large one.

Two policies, and usually two people

As a general rule the owner's policy answers for the building and its systems, and the tenant's renters policy answers for the tenant's belongings and their cost of living somewhere else. The carriers decide the specifics on the facts and the lease, and we do not adjudicate any of it. What we can do is make sure both sides of the loss are recorded properly while everything is still in place.

In practice that means the structure and the contents get photographed and listed as separate records from the first hour, not merged into one scope that has to be picked apart later. It also means telling the owner and the tenant the same thing at the same time. A large share of the arguments we see on rental losses start with one party learning something a week after the other did.

One failure, several claims

In a multi-unit building water does not respect the unit numbers. A supply line on a second floor reaches the unit below it, the unit beside it through a shared wall, and the corridor between them. That is three tenants, three contents inventories and one building claim, and the tenant who reported it is often not the one with the most damage.

So the neighboring units get checked on the first visit whether or not anyone in them has complained, and the ones nobody answers get checked too. In summer, half of them may be vacant. A wet wall cavity in an empty unit, with the thermostat set high or the power off to save money, is the most reliable way we know to find growth in September that started in June.

The empty months and the turnover schedule

Between May and August a very large part of this county's rental stock has nobody in it. A failure in an occupied unit is found in minutes; the same failure in a unit that is between leases is found whenever somebody next opens the door, which may be at the make-ready walkthrough in July. Those are the losses that reach the framing and the ceiling below.

The second half of that problem is the calendar. Leases here turn over on a fixed date, and a unit that is drying on July 28 is a unit that cannot be handed to anybody on August 1. Drying takes the days it takes; what is flexible is sequencing, which unit gets equipment first, and whether a tenant is moved to another unit rather than held in a hotel.