Property and tenant inspections are the most important duty a property manager performs.
A bad tenant can cause a lot of damage in a short period of time. There is a natural tendency to assume that as long as the rent is being paid on time and there are no complaints, everything is going well.
We perform more inspections than
any other property management company…period!
We have taken many new clients whose previous management company hadn’t stepped foot in the property for many years. Some “warehouse” management companies do not perform any inspections. If you feel you need an inspection, it is up to you to request it and they will charge you extra for it. In our opinion, this is not good Property Management.
Most management companies perform only 1 inspection per year and that is near the end of a tenants first year. That means a tenant can be in your home for nearly 12 months before somebody checks to see if your house is being cared for properly. This is standard procedure for nearly all property management companies, but it is not good enough.
You are paying the management company to be your eyes and ears! It is extremely important for your property to have regularly scheduled inspections.
Regularly scheduled inspections allow us to catch problems quickly. It is also very effective at deterring undesirable tenant behavior.
Your property is inspected 2 times in the first year…and every 6 months thereafter.
Our inspections consists of a walkthrough with the tenant to assess the overall care and maintenance of your property. If we see things that are alarming or outright violations of the lease, we will give the tenant a lease violation notice, which gives the tenant 10 days to correct the fault. We then schedule another inspection in 10 days to verify the tenant has corrected the problem.
The 90 day inspection
The first inspection of your property will be 90 days after the tenant moves in. This is the most critical inspection and something you won’t find any other management company will do. This inspection will give us a good idea of the living habits of our tenant shortly after they move into your property. If a tenant gets off to a bad start, we are there to let them know what is expected of them, and how to properly take care of your home.
Our 2nd inspection is about 6 months later
If we find things of concern during any of our inspection, we bring it to the tenants’ attention and suggest a better way to take care of your property. This second inspection of your property happens about 9 months after the tenant moves in. This inspection is a good time to evaluate the overall quality of the tenant and decide if we want to offer them a new lease at the end of their 12 month term.
Time to raise the rent ?
After the 2nd inspection, we will report back to you with our overall impression of the tenant. We will discuss whether we want to offer the tenant a new lease and we will perform some market research and recommend whether a rent increase is in order.
What we do during an inspection
During our inspections, we are also looking for maintenance and repair items that are the Owners responsibility such as roof cleaning, new caulk in the bathrooms, or maybe it’s time for a new coat of stain on the deck. Any findings will be reported back to you. We will suggest future maintenance items for your consideration and we will give you our assessment of the urgency along with pictures whenever helpful.
Over 100 digital photographs to document the condition of your property
The move-in inspection and comprehensive tenant orientation.
While we don’t count our thorough move-in procedure as an inspection, it is worthy of mention. We meet in-person with the new tenant to document the overall condition of your property with an in-depth hand written report supported by up to 200 digital pictures documenting the condition of your property.</strong
This kind of documentation is critical to resolve disputes over what damage took place during the tenants stay.
We finish that move-in inspection with a full Move-in orientation with our new tenant to familiarize the tenant with all the systems of the property. We also take the time to discuss our expectations of the tenant, the legal requirements of the lease, and pass along many years of care and maintenance tips.
Interested in Property Management?
Contact us at 425-908-7989 or click below to request a FREE rental estimate.