Three years ago I walked into the entryway of one of my 12-unit buildings and counted 41 packages stacked against the wall, some of them there for over a week. One box had leaked what turned out to be cat litter across a neighbor’s parcel, and two tenants were emailing me daily asking where their deliveries had gone. That was the week I finally wrote a real package policy instead of just improvising every time a driver buzzed the intercom.
Package volume has roughly tripled at my properties since 2019, and it is not slowing down. If you manage rentals and do not have a written plan for where deliveries go, how long they can sit, and who is responsible when something goes missing, you are one bad week away from a pile of boxes and an angry group chat.
Why This Became a Real Landlord Problem
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At my smaller properties, four units or fewer, packages used to just sit on the porch and nobody complained. Once I crossed into buildings with 8 to 20 units, shared entryways turned into logistics problems. On average my larger buildings now receive between 15 and 25 packages a day across all tenants, and during the December to January stretch that number climbs past 40. Multiply that by a few days of accumulation and you get a fire hazard, a tripping hazard, and a theft magnet all at once.
I also learned the hard way that unattended packages affect how a building shows to prospective tenants. During a showing last spring, a visitor stepped over three boxes in the hallway and asked me point blank whether the building had a theft problem. It did not, but the pile made it look that way, and that is reason enough to fix it.
Deciding Where Deliveries Should Actually Go
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Before writing anything down, walk your property and figure out where packages can physically live without blocking exits or fire equipment. I settled on four options depending on the building:
- A dedicated mailroom or storage closet near the main entrance, ideally with a door that locks
- Smart package lockers for buildings with 10 or more units
- Individual porches or unit doors for properties with 4 units or fewer and direct outdoor access
- A designated shelf inside a locked lobby, clearly labeled with each unit number
Whatever you choose, put it in writing in the lease addendum, not just a verbal explanation during move-in. I had a tenant argue for weeks that nobody told her packages were not allowed to sit in the shared stairwell, and without a signed document I had no leg to stand on.
Writing the Actual Policy
My current policy, which I now hand to every new tenant at 8 of my 9 properties, covers five things: where packages should be delivered, how long they can sit before I remove them to storage, who is liable for theft or damage, whether tenants can request signature-required delivery, and what happens with oversized items. I keep it to one page because a three-page policy nobody reads gets ignored the same as no policy at all.
I also added a line stating that any package left unclaimed for more than 14 days will be moved to a locked storage unit and the tenant will be notified by text. That single rule cut my hallway clutter by roughly 70 percent within two months of introducing it.
Are Package Lockers Worth the Cost?
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I installed a bank of smart lockers at my largest property, a 16-unit building, for about 380,000 yen including installation. Tenants get a code texted to their phone when a delivery arrives, and the box stays locked until they retrieve it. It paid for itself within 14 months just in the time I stopped spending sorting and re-delivering misplaced boxes, not to mention the drop in theft complaints, which went from 6 incidents in one year to zero the following year.
For smaller buildings, lockers rarely make financial sense. A 4-unit property with a secure entry and a small shelf works fine, and I would not recommend spending money on lockers for anything under 8 units unless delivery volume is unusually high.
Oversized, Perishable, and High-Value Deliveries
Furniture, appliances, and grocery deliveries need separate rules because they cannot sit in a mailroom. My policy requires tenants to notify me at least 24 hours in advance for anything that will not fit through a standard doorway, so I can arrange a hand truck or clear a path. For perishable deliveries like meal kits, I ask tenants to use insulated delivery boxes or arrange pickup within a few hours, since a spoiled box left in a hot stairwell in August is not a problem I want to deal with twice.
For high-value items, electronics especially, I encourage tenants to request signature confirmation from the carrier rather than relying on the building’s general policy. It shifts responsibility to the carrier and the tenant, which keeps me out of disputes I cannot actually resolve.
Liability and What the Lease Should Say
The single most important sentence in my package addendum states plainly that the landlord is not liable for lost, stolen, or damaged packages once they are delivered to the property, and that any theft should be reported directly to the police and the carrier. I am not being cold about this; I still help tenants file claims and check camera footage when we have it. But without that liability line in the lease, tenants sometimes assume the landlord will simply replace a stolen item, and that expectation causes more conflict than the theft itself.
I run cameras covering all delivery areas at 7 of my 9 properties now, and footage has resolved every theft dispute I have had since installing them. If your budget allows for even one camera pointed at the main entrance, it is worth more than any written policy on its own.
That is the system I use across all 9 of my properties, and it took a pile of 41 boxes and a ruined carton of cat litter to get me here. Write the policy down, pick a spot that fits your building size, and set a clear time limit before you start moving boxes yourself.
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