As a property manager, you should be conducting regular inspections of your properties. You place trust in tenants to maintain a property and follow lease rules, but it should be in your best interest to run routine inspections to ensure there’s nothing wrong with any property you find yourself managing.

Further, keeping proactive with maintenance and repairs will help you stay up to date on rental properties, and potentially save your client getting hit with unwanted costs.

But, how often should a property be inspected ?

As a property manager you can drive by a rental property, failing to do this simply opens yourself to risk. To inspect the interior, by law you are required to give tenants at least 24 hours notice before visiting.

A notice must state the reason for visitation and the time when you are planning to enter the property. It is essential that you are not violating any local or state rental laws.

When you should perform inspections:

Even if you provide notice stating legitimate reasons it's not always a good idea to bother tenants. Here are some appropriate times to inspect a property:

When a new tenant moves in 

Also known as a move-in inspection, this is usually done when a tenant signs a lease and moves into the house. It should be done with every new tenancy lease agreement to allow both parties to document anything wrong with the property.

Sophisticated property maintenance technology like Bricks+Agent allows property managers and tenants to conduct a mobile inspection of properties and reduce the amount of time spent on site. Modern property management software are also equipped with tools like voice dictation, image uploading and more to help property managers inspect with ease.

When you want to check for unauthorised tenants

Got a hunch that there's more people living in a property than what's been agreed to on the lease? If there’s someone living in your rental property without any legal tenancy, the occupant will be called an unauthorised tenant.

This is a common scenario when the legal tenant begins to house-share with someone or when someone overstays. Ensure that you do at least a 5 minute inspection to keep track of the rooms, bedding and living situation.

When a tenant moves out

Move out inspections are just as important as move in inspections. This will help you gauge whether the property is in the same condition or not. While normal wear and tear is acceptable, you should also look for major issues (if any) to assure that your house is in the same condition as it was at the time of rent.

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