My father owned several rental houses and while growing up during the 1950s I did some of the yard care. I just showed up and cut the grass whenever it was convenient for me.

In 1966 I bought my first rental property, a four unit small apartment building on Capitol Hill in D.C.. I did a lot of the maintenance and just showed up, except when I needed to actually enter an apartment for which an appointment was scheduled for mutual convenience.

Having been a landlord of both residential and commercial properties ever since - and having been a residential tenant a few times as well - I have never signed a lease as lessor or lessee where yard maintenance required an appointment in advance. I have rented in The Villages on three separate occasions. One house had a backyard pool. The pool maintenance person just showed up, no notice, at her convenience. Same for the yard crews at the houses.

This got me curious so I found the standard Florida Realtor residential lease. https://eforms.com/download/2015/10/...t-template.pdf

It seems to be silent regarding any notice requirement for outside maintenance although plenty of blanks can be checked off and/or filled in to specify such a condition, as well as who is responsible for what.

This is the Florida statute governing residential tenancies. Statutes & Constitution
:View Statutes
:

Online Sunshine

much ado about nothing !

I disagree.

I think what most people are forgetting/ignoring...is the layout of CYV's.

Given that we're not talking about windows/sliding doors facing the street, or an open yard, where privacy can't be expected, but instead are facing a walled in area and what is otherwise a very private setting...it's perfectly reasonable for folks to expect a little privacy on that side.

I think the poster above who said that maybe the landlord is just a nosy/Peeping Tom sort, is IMHO...probably the closest to the truth.

Putting a lock on the gate by the tenant, so that someone wanting to access the 'private' back yard and has to ring the doorbell (removing lock it when not home)...is a simple solution that avoids confrontation with the landlord.

I have locked gates to my backyards. The lawn guys know where I keep the gate keys for their use. They just come right into the yards. My houses have several glass French doors as well as windows and their blinds are usually open during the day. The yard guys need to come up close and even against the house to prune, sweep and blow leaves and such away from it. They inevitably peek in and if I am at home I wave at them and they wave back. That is how it works.

Now if I had something to hide from a landlord, observable illicit activities, had a wife or girlfriend who liked walking around the house naked, was engaging in some outdoor daytime "Sex on the Squares" activity or the like, then and only then would I be concerned about yard maintenance people entering my yard unannounced.

You hit the nail on the head. This would be grounds to either getting out of the lease since the landlord violated it, or seek some type of monetary compensation from the courts for violating privacy and possible trauma to the cats. Also possible criminal violation if you felt threaten by him looking in. Good luck in whatever course of action you seek.

This is crazy. Does a CYV have lawn behind the gate? Everyone I ever saw did. Is the owner required to mow that? That answer is yes. So just how does he do that? Make an appointment? Never going to happen.

Lawn services are never going to provide service if they have to make an appointment to mow. And if the owner does it neither should he.

If you require that much control over your CYV yard, buy don't rent.

Or maybe since the OP is about to have his home close to under contract, and then can buy in TV, he needs to break his lease, six months early. That gives pause and a good reason to not fulfill terms of lease, with a trespassing issue.

Lol

There are on line services to report problematic tenants. Hope the landlord uses it.

Now Do You Get it???
 

Lol

Speaks volumes that the tenant had these weeds in a place she had been renting for months.

Wonder what the multiple cat litter box smells like.

One can't help but wonder, given some of the responses, if there aren't more landlords than imagined...whom like to spy on their tenants. :shrug:

I wonder what kind of weed was growing in the backyard...

That is known as murder even if it is a trespasser which the landlord and yard maintenance folks are not. Moreover, the landlords (husband and wife) did not appear out of nowhere. They no doubt came through the gate.

It is self defense if one is defending oneself or another inside a dwelling from an intruder who has made a forced entry, is actually inside the dwelling and poses a mortal threat or great bodily harm.