When You Give Your House Keys to a Stranger

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/16/realestate/when-you-give-your-house-keys-to-a-stranger.html

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One Saturday afternoon in late May, I puzzled over my toilet seat, attempting to decipher the strange Hieroglyphics someone had drawn onto the porcelain surface using Sharpie marker. Or maybe waterproof mascara?

Weeks earlier, my husband and I had listed our home for rent through a broker. We live in Cape May, a quaint Victorian town at the tip of the Jersey Shore, and it seemed like an easy way to make some extra cash. In short order, we weeded and mulched the flower beds, found a management company to handle changeover cleanings, and debated the appropriate number of beach towels to leave behind.

But now, as I inspected my defaced bathroom after the first set of guests checked out, I realized I’d neglected to prepare for one thing: the queasy feeling of having strangers in my space, touching my stuff, sleeping in my bed, leaving greasy takeout containers on my living room floor. (Don’t they know that’s the hallowed spot where Rudy, my beloved 15-year-old German shepherd, passed away in my arms!?) I felt a strange sense of territorialism creeping in.

“If we’ve taken the time and effort to put our personalities into our environments and to feel connected with them and express ourselves through them, inviting others in puts us in a vulnerable position,” said Lindsay T. Graham, a space researcher and social psychologist at the Center for Built Environment at the University of California at Berkeley. “It may sound cheesy, but you’re handing a piece of yourself over to a stranger who might not respect it. You’re renting out part of your identity.”

Fortunately, there are strategies newbies can employ that make letting go easier. Among the most common is to remove all valuable items or sentimental artifacts, either bringing them with you or locking them in a closet.

While this is sound advice, homeowners can take the depersonalization process too far, Dr. Graham said. Leaving a little bit of character behind — in the form of, say, a note explaining your connection to a favorite tchotchke or piece of furniture — can serve to humanize you and your space, potentially inspiring better behavior from tenants and forging a dialogue that stirs compassion on both sides.

Take the 38-page booklet that Bill Burleigh leaves for guests at his 1,400-square-foot Moose Lodge in Big Sur, Calif., named for Mr. Burleigh’s late bloodhound. The “Moose Manual” doesn’t merely offer the Wi-Fi password and explain the inner workings of the dishwasher; it also incorporates the homeowner’s sense of humor, encouraging guests to spend their vacation naked, since the property sits on 10 secluded acres overlooking the Pacific.

Tenants are also greeted by a life-size copper rendering of Don Quixote on a horse, a homage to Mr. Burleigh’s nickname when he worked as a judge and advocated for causes he says he never won, as well as a bottle of his homemade wine, which he calls “a fine red varietal” or “fly or ant spray.”

“Making people smile is sort of my raison d’être,” said Mr. Burleigh, 84, who has had only two negative experiences in 10 years of weekly rentals. In one case, a tenant broke house rules and hosted a large event, a pseudoscientific convention on energy cleansing for 50 of what Mr. Burleigh’s wife, Anne, calls “hocus-pocus people.” In the other, a gentleman trashed the house, leaving furniture outside and broken glass and dog-soiled rugs inside.

“This place is full of smiles and whimsical things,” Mr. Burleigh said. “I’ve always trusted people, and it’s worked out. You just have to trust and assume the best.”

For Seth Kelsey, an Olympic fencer and major in the Air Force reserves, achieving this Zen mind-set is easiest when there’s physical distance between him and the six rental properties he owns in Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, Colo. Because five of the homes were fixer-uppers and Mr. Kelsey oversaw and completed some of the renovation work himself, he feels an emotional attachment to them.

“Resist the urge to drive by unless you have a specific reason,” he said. “You’ll make yourself crazy noticing an open screen door or strange parking configuration. If anything is actually wrong, you’ll get a call. Otherwise, overly watching only raises anxiety.”

This is an impossibility for Scott Creamer, whose rental property is a 460-square-foot, treehouse-like apartment that’s attached to his home in the South Congress neighborhood of Austin, Tex. While Mr. Creamer, who is 55 and owns a branding and advertising agency, feels “no weirdness” about allowing strangers in his space, his husband, Timothy Lee, has the kind of control issues that lead him to redo folded laundry or rearrange a stacked dishwasher. So, when the couple designed their house five years ago, they included a separate entrance for the apartment and extra insulation in the shared wall.

“We did as much as we could to keep our personal lives and apartment separate,” Mr. Creamer said. “But, turns out, interacting with our guests and, in some cases, developing friendships with them, is something that’s helped Tim feel more comfortable.”

When it comes to coping with strangers in one’s home, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy, Dr. Graham said. The best advice may be to figure out the plan that works best for you — and stick to it.

Consider Michael Seiler, a behavioral real estate researcher and professor of real estate and finance at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., who hosted the first renters at his house, which is on a peninsula on Lake Whitehurst in Norfolk, Va., in February.

Eight women who had found his property through Airbnb showed up in a stretch limo for what was supposed to be a mellow birthday celebration. But, after Dr. Seiler bid them good evening, hundreds more turned up for a premeditated, pay-to-enter, rager of a party that caused an estimated $35,000 worth of damage to the house.

Because he’d gone against his better judgment and allowed one of the scammers to pay for the rental and another to sign the contract, Dr. Seiler spent months worrying no one would be held accountable. He took his case to small-claims court, and eventually won a judgment of $25,000, the maximum allowed in a small-claims hearing in Virginia.

“In scuba diving, they say to plan your dive and dive your plan,” he said. “That’s applicable here, too. Do not deviate in the moment.” If you need help figuring out what this plan should look like — or if you’re simply in need of emotional support after turning over your keys — Dr. Seiler recommends using the Meetup app to find a network of like-minded property owners in your community.

In my own case, it has helped to remember that things are bound to go wrong, and this doesn’t make me a traitor to my home. Drinking glasses will break, pets will have accidents, and Scrabble tiles will go missing — just like they would if I were living in the house myself. Most of the problems I’ve encountered this summer have been nothing a little all-purpose cleanser and elbow grease couldn’t fix — it did the job on my toilet seat.

In several instances, the house has been left in better condition than I would have managed after a week of deadlines and dog hair. That’s possibly because I’m not above buying the respect of my weekly tenants — my husband leaves each of them a $100 gift card to the local restaurant he owns. That may sound tacky, but it’s a psychological strategy with merit. “It’s much harder to mistreat someone you like or even just know,” said Dr. Seiler.

And if we ever do feel again like the sanctuary of our home has been violated? We’ll try focusing on our motivation for renting in the first place.

“Whether it’s altruism, paying bills, or unloading a burden, there are all kinds of reasons a person may rent out their home,” Dr. Graham said. “It’s about acknowledging what purpose this is serving in your life and not having judgment around it. If money is the value for you, own that. Recognize that it’s good enough.”

When all else fails, I try reframing my thinking. If I feel queasy about people in my house, it means I have a space in which I feel happy and supported, and now I’m able to share that vibe with others.

One strategy for embracing this joy is leaving a guest book behind. “A building is just a building until you understand its story and how people connect to it,” Dr. Graham said. “So reading these messages can be a really enriching exercise.”

It may even help you forgive those takeout containers on the living room floor.

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