Rental Property Biohazard Cleanup

How these jobs usually come to light

Rental jobs often start differently from ones where the owner lives in the home. The person calling is usually one step removed from what happened. Some patterns we see:

• Found at move-out. A tenant leaves and the walk-through turns up stained carpet, a soiled mattress left behind, or an odor in one room.
• A welfare check. Police enter after a family can't reach the tenant, and the owner is told the home has been released.
• An injury during a tenancy. A tenant is hurt at home, recovers or moves out, and the room still needs proper cleanup.
• Something at a vacant property. An empty house between tenants is entered without permission, and the owner finds signs of injury or drug use.

In every case the owner is making decisions about a home they don't live in, often from a distance, and usually with turnover costs already running.

Working in a vacant rental

A vacant house is in some ways the simplest setting for us. There's no family to work around and nobody needs a room back tonight. Owners often hand over a lockbox code and let us work.

Vacancy brings its own issues, though. With nobody inside, HVAC may have been off, which can let odors build in a closed-up house. Utilities sometimes need to be reconnected before work can start, because we need power and running water on site. If the property has been empty a while, let us know so we can ask about utilities when we schedule.

Single-family rentals around Middle Tennessee also tend to have features apartments don't: crawl spaces, detached garages, sheds and older original flooring under newer carpet. Any of these can be part of the affected area, and the assessment covers them.

When a tenant's belongings are still in the home

This is the part owners worry about most, and with good reason. Belongings a tenant leaves behind, especially after a death, usually aren't the owner's to throw away without following the right process. The rules depend on the circumstances and the lease, so talk to an attorney before anything personal leaves the house.

What we can do is keep the cleanup and the belongings question separate:

• We clean only what's in the agreed scope, which normally means the affected area and materials that are clearly contaminated.
• Contaminated personal items are photographed and listed before anything is done with them, so the estate or family has a record.
• Unaffected belongings stay where they are unless the person with authority over them tells us otherwise.
• If a family member or executor wants to be involved, we'll talk with them directly about items of personal value.

How individual items are judged salvageable or not is explained on our contaminated furniture and materials page.

Fitting cleanup into a turnover

Biohazard cleanup comes before the rest of the make-ready work, not alongside it. Painters, carpet installers and cleaners shouldn't be in the affected area until we're finished. Here's the order that usually works:

1. Release and access

   Confirm any police or medical examiner involvement is over and the belongings question has an answer, or at least a plan.

2. Assessment and scope

   We document the affected area and give you a written scope listing what we'll remove, clean and leave for a contractor.

3. Biohazard removal and disinfection

   Contaminated materials come out and remaining surfaces are disinfected and deodorized.

4. Contractor repairs

   New pad, carpet, drywall or paint go in once the space is clean. We'll have told you during assessment whether a contractor is needed.

5. Regular make-ready

   Your usual turnover cleaning, inspection and listing photos follow.

Keeping the biohazard stage separate also keeps your invoices clean, which matters if you're submitting part of the cost to an insurer.

Records you'll get for the property file

Rental owners often need to explain this job to someone else: an insurer, a co-owner, a tenant's family or an accountant. We provide:

If you manage several rentals, keep these with the property file. Our guide on documentation in biohazard remediation explains what each record is useful for.

Before we come out

You don't need to clean anything. If you're at the property, close the door to the affected room and keep any prospective tenants, showing agents or maintenance staff out of it. Don't send a turnover crew in first; once carpet has been pulled up or a mattress dragged across the house, the affected area can grow. Read what not to do before an assessment if you want the full list.

If the house has a tenant still living there, check with them before we visit, and let us know if they'd like to be present.

What drives the scope, and related pages

The written scope, and so the price, depends on how many rooms are affected, what flooring is involved, how much is left in the house, whether crawl spaces or garages are included, and how much material needs disposal. We don't price over the phone. See how pricing works.

This page is about the property and the job. If you're the owner weighing who to call, what your landlord policy might do and when you can re-rent, the landlord page is written for those decisions. For a broader planning view, read biohazard cleanup for rental and investment properties. If the cleanup involves blood in a rental specifically, blood cleanup in rental properties covers that focus.

We travel from Nashville to rentals throughout our service area, including Clarksville, Murfreesboro and Columbia.

Questions people ask