Mailbox Issue
I have a three family brownstone, I live in the bottom apartment and rent out the top two. The mail for all three units is dropped in my downstairs gate by the mailman and I put the mail for the two tenants out in the secure hallway in unlocked boxes. My new tenant has an…
I have a three family brownstone, I live in the bottom apartment and rent out the top two. The mail for all three units is dropped in my downstairs gate by the mailman and I put the mail for the two tenants out in the secure hallway in unlocked boxes. My new tenant has an issue with not having his own locked mailbox and with me touching his mail. Am I legally obligated to install and give him his own locked mailbox? I think there are maybe two 3-family buildings on my block with those ugly silver units with separate locks, everyone else does it the way we do. Anyone?
Even I don’t get mail in suspicious brown wrapping!!! I do get way too many Williams Sonoma catalogs and catalogs for lots of fugly outdoor garden ornaments. I can fill a 1 1/2′ high box with catalogs in just over a week.
And usuaalyy it’s my tenants who get the mail first , sort it and drop mine on the steps going up to my unit.
But I guess my tenants aren’t psycho.
I had an issue like this. Rather than being a douchebag and expecting my landlord to address my paranoia with an ugly mailbox – I got a PO Box at the post office.
You know, every time I move, I dread the mail situation at my new location…
Being able to getting ‘no signature packages’ delivered when I’m not around is massively important to me but it’s not a “deal breaker”, so I always go into a lease not knowing how that will work out.
Last place, worked out badly. Current place, has worked out great. Next place, who knows?!
Will I be able to get boxes of diapers delivered from Amazon.com or will my son become potty trained before he is 18 months old?? Time will tell.
If the latter, I plan to write a book called “I Potty Trained My Son in 4 Days Because I Couldn’t Get Diapers Delivered and You Can Too!”
Beware of any tenant that asks for a private mailbox with a lock. , you are likely dealing with a tenant that will be running some sort of business from the apartment and wants to keep the nature of the business private. You as a residing legal three owner are not obligated to provide locking boxes as noted above, however, to make your life easier, investing in an Academy Corporation triple mail box unit with locks is not the worst idea in the world. Although legal, private owners distibuting mail is a little archaic these days…Good Luck!
Our usual carrier is good & knows that if someone isn’t home for delivery he can leave it w/ a neighbor who is. Even UPS is aware of who will accept for whom.
vinca, LOL. ANybody ever tried to get a USPS package redilivered or rerouted??? ROTFLMMFAO.
I get everything delivered to my offfice for this very reason. USPS was supposed to be delivering my tax forms but never got thenm and they never put a notice on the door. I found out a week later when y accountant called about them.
I avoid USPS for anything of importance or larger than what will fit through the gate.
BTW, I cut some of the metal bars out of the top of the grate just for this purpose.
THERE IS NO WAY ON GOD’S EARTH THAT I WILL GO TO THE FULTON ST. POST OFFICE AGAIN AFTER HAVING BEEN THERE ONCE.
OK. Ittakes a big man to admit he’s wrong…Enough authoritative vocies are saying I’m wrong, so maybe I am! I argue with conviction – right, or wrong. Until I yield.
But I still say…most people could care less about this mail issue, including the USPS!! The fact that Fruit Fly is making this an issue (among other issues), is a bad sign.
BTW, the other advantage of the keykeeper arrangement is that when packages are sent by USPS (rather than Fedex, etc.) and don’t require a signature, the package delivery carrier can also gain access and leave delivery inside vestibule rather than the misery of a notice of attempt to deliver and trip to the PO.
USPS has a one-point delivery policy. They’ll deliver mail upstairs or downstairs, but unless you’ve got a great carrier, they won’t deliver to both at the same address. When our carrier went from someone great to someone terrible, we installed boxes in the vestibule and a keykeeper outside. Until then, the new carrier seemed to take pleasure in avoiding the letter slot that had been used for decades and scattering the mail over the top of the gate. It happens that the design of the gate under our stoop could easily accommodate additional brass slots for more than one tenant. We now vastly prefer the boxes in the vestibule as it means dry mail regardless of carrier, and regardless of weather. I understand that it’s not usual in some neighborhoods for carriers to climb steps. They do it in PS, but depending on carrier, they also grumble about it. For me, both tenant and OP sound stubborn and high-maintenance. And re: number of units, the number of units is determined by the CO, and not by whether the LL lives on premises or how many units are rented.