VacantHomes.ca

Landlords Between Tenants

The unit is empty. It still needs looking after.

Physical property care during a turnover — documentation, monitoring, cleaning and maintenance coordination. Not property management.

A turnover vacancy is short, busy and higher-risk than it looks. The unit is empty, often mid-repair, with trades coming and going, keys circulating, and an owner who may be in another city entirely. Everything that threatens a vacant property applies, compressed into a few weeks and layered on top of a schedule.

The work during that window is genuinely physical: document the condition at move-out with photographs and video, keep the property monitored while it sits, coordinate cleaning and junk removal, handle the non-trade tasks that always come up — filters, bulbs, smoke alarm batteries, minor touch-ups — arrange lawn and snow, let trades in for repairs, and walk the unit before the next tenant takes possession.

What this service is not, and will not become, is property management. In Alberta, activities such as advertising a rental, showing it to prospective tenants, screening and selecting them, negotiating leases, collecting rent and holding security deposits are regulated and require the appropriate licensing under the Real Estate Act. VacantHomes does none of those things.

That is a real boundary, not a disclaimer. If you need a property manager, you need a licensed property manager. If what you actually need is someone to look after the building during the gap — which is what most out-of-town owners are missing — that is exactly what this is.

What actually goes wrong

Undocumented move-out condition

Deposit disputes turn on evidence. Photographs and video taken at move-out, dated, resolve most of them before they start.

The unit sitting unmonitored

A vacant suite has the same water and heating risks as any empty house, and often an older mechanical system.

Coordinating trades remotely

Turnover repairs need someone to open the door, and turnovers are on a deadline.

Condition at move-in

A documented walkthrough before the next tenant takes possession is the other half of the deposit-dispute problem.

Need someone at the house?

Tell us what the property needs. Direct services throughout Greater Calgary.