Importance of Walkthrough Inspections

Key Points:

• Be sure to perform routine walkthrough inspections on your rental properties.
• Inspections will help to determine deferred maintenance, liability concerns, tenant negligence & lease violations.

Deferred maintenance: This can be as simple as a small piece of wood rot and as large as a roof replacement.  It is important to view your properties on a regular basis to determine the immediate needs of the home to maintain it’s value and integrity.  It’s easier and less expensive when you can find a problem when it is small.

Liability concerns: Nobody likes to go to court especially if you are the defendant and in today’s world you have to take extra precautions to avoid being drug into court over something that was preventable.  Florida Statutes require certain things to be in working order and within a certain date range when you are operating a rental property and many rental property owners are not aware of these requirements.  Ask yourself these questions and you will soon find that you may not be operating in accordance with the laws governing tenants and landlords and therefore you are leaving yourself at risk.

When is the last time you checked that all your windows are operable?
How old is your smoke alarms?
Where are smoke alarms installed?
Do you have an anti-tip bracket on your stove?
Do your windows have screens? 

If you don’t know the answers to these questions then you are at risk for potential lawsuits from tenants.

Tenant Negligence & Lease Violations: Let’s face it….Tenants don’t care for your property like they should or like you would, it’s the unfortunate truth and that is why you must enter your rental property to inspect the home for negligence and violations so that you can have these concerns corrected before the damage is too far gone and in excess of a tenants deposit.  Lease violations are also of great concern because you coudl have multiple unauthorized tenants that have slid under the radar and could potentially be individuals that you would never rent to if you had the opportunity to perform the proper screening on.  You can also find that a tenant has snuck in an unauthorized pet that could be doing harm to the property or could be a vicious breed or the tenant could have installed a trampoline and both those items leave you open for huge insurance liabilites and potential cancellations of your insurance policy.

As always, our team is here to serve as a resource to you.  We have many years of experience and a staff of professionals here to help.  If we can be of assistance to you give us a call at (863) 333-5161.