Mail forwarding

[josearau]

Hi there.
I understand the virtual mailbox when retiring expatriate, but here’s the twist: my primary residence in the USA will become a rental so if I do USPS mail forwarding to the virtual mailbox physical address, how will my rental tenants get their mail?
I can’t find the answer online.
Does anyone know what I should do?
Thanks!

 

[Sunset]

Only rent to people with a different name

 

[braumeister]

I think you'll have to tell your tenants that mail is not delivered to the house and they will need a private mailbox. I don't think the post office will rent you an official mailbox without an actual street address, so they would need to use one of the private mailbox options like UPS Store or similar. Of course, that assumes there is such an option in the neighborhood.

Or you could change your own mailing address to be a mailbox and let the tenants get their mail at the house.

 

[cathy63]

Mail is forwarded by name, not just by address. Otherwise you could never get mail the first year you live in an apartment because the previous tenant would have forwarded it to their new address.

That said, forwarding is not perfect. USPS will sometimes fail to forward something that should be sent on. It's much rarer for them to forward something that shouldn't be.

 

[braumeister]

forwarding is not perfect.

In my experience, forwarding is very, very far from perfect.

 

[DenverGuy42]

I've been forwarding my mail since March (we moved into our cabin, out of the city for a while).

You can only forward for 12 months, after that they want you to change your address.

You can forward either all mail (that is what we did) or by name. So you would have to forward your name, and then any other name you wanted. Your tenants should get their mail in that case.

That said, as others have said, it is an imperfect solution. We use informed delivery and keep a list of all mail we should have received and check it off as we get it. It sometimes takes two weeks (once three) to get a piece of mail. So if you are expecting anything in a timely fashion - this won't work.

 

[candrew]

We use a virtual mailbox and until the virus hit, traveled almost perpetually for 3-1/2 years.

Rather than put in a change of address with the USPS, our solution was to use our VM address for the important stuff, i.e. financial institutions, credit cards, property tax statements, etc. Most of that we had already switched to e-statements anyway.

That basically leaves only junk mail coming to our home.