Leaving a property vacant

Photograph the whole building, dated: every room empty, all four exterior walls, every door and lock, and the meter readings.

Every argument you might have to make later — the damage, the break-in, the claim that someone was living there all along — is a comparison against these photos. Without them there is nothing to compare to.

Post no-trespassing signs, and photograph them in place.

It removes “I thought it was abandoned” from anyone who turns up inside. What posted notice does legally is a question for your state; the photograph is worth having either way.

Deed, parcel number, latest tax bill.

Everything else here is worth something only in proportion to how sure the reader is that the building is yours.

Keep the utilities in your name, keep paying them, keep the bills.

Service in the owner's name, paid, is the most-asked-for evidence of possession there is — and the first thing somebody else will try to put in their own name.

Tell your insurer the building is now unoccupied.

Most standard policies limit or void coverage once a building sits empty past a month or two. The item here most likely to cost you real money, and it has nothing to do with squatters.

Keep whatever dates the emptiness — permits, invoices, listing photos, the probate file.

Dated proof that the building was empty and in your hands, not somebody's home. A renovation leaves permits; an estate leaves court filings; a turn between tenants leaves the last lease and a move-out inspection. Any of them does the job.

Write down, dated, every person allowed inside. Names — not roles.

“The contractor” is not a name. When somebody is standing in your building saying they had permission, the only thing that answers them is a list written before it happened.

Say it in writing to anyone you hand a key to: nobody stays overnight, nobody passes the key on.

The most common way in, and the only one you can close with a sentence. It belongs in the contractor's agreement if you have one — and in an email to the property manager, the listing agent, the cleaner or the cousin checking on it if you don't.

Rekey whenever someone who held a key stops needing it.

A crew finishing, a tenant moving out, a listing ending, an agent handing back the lockbox code. You are rekeying an empty building you own, which is maintenance. It stops being maintenance the moment somebody is inside — then locks are the one thing you must not touch. That is the other checklist.

Cameras that record somewhere other than the building.

A recorder in the hall closet is evidence right up until somebody carries the hall closet out.

Drive by on a schedule and log the date each time.

The log is the point. “I check on it regularly” is a claim; eleven dated visits is a record.

Check whether your city requires vacant properties to be registered.

Many do, and some fine you for not. The rules are genuinely local — a question for your municipality, and not one we are going to guess for you.