Blog & Advice

Spring Cleaning: Inspect Your Rental Properties Annually

Springtime ushers in warmer days and blooming trees. It’s also a strategic time of year to inspect the overall health of your rental property. You should ensure you are scheduling time annually to perform property inspections checks; specifically, spring is a good time of year to inspect for any damage that may have been caused by winter weather and look for any potential problems that may need to be addressed. By inspecting your property regularly, you can help catch potential issues early and budget for larger renovations or replacements down the road. Here are some tasks that you or your property management company should be performing to make the most of your springtime property assessment and continually maximize your return on investment.

Schedule a Walk-Through

The first step to an efficient rental property inspection is to schedule time to walk through it with your tenant. This is a good idea for several reasons. First, in most places tenant-landlord law requires that you arrange any visits to your rental property ahead of time. Another good reason to schedule a walk-through with your tenant is that it demonstrates that you respect your tenant’s time and privacy, which can help maintain positive tenant relations. If possible, invite your tenant to come with you as you inspect and assess your rental property as they may be able to tell you about developing issues right away.

Check for Winter Damage

Spring is the ideal time for rental property inspections because this is the time to check for winter damage. Heavy snow, rains, wind, and even melting ice can all lead to property maintenance and repair issues. To reduce your repair costs, it’s best to catch these issues early and address them quickly. For best results, use a property maintenance checklist or hire a professional property management company, like Real Property Management, to conduct an assessment for you.

Check for Unreported Damages

As you assess the condition of your property, it’s also important to keep an eye out for unreported damage caused by your tenant. Some tenants may try to avoid the subject or hide the fact that they broke something. But waiting until they move out to discover repair issues is not an efficient way to manage rental property repairs. Instead, focus on communicating positively and effectively with your tenant and make it a point to check for such as walls, carpets, and window coverings.

Assess and Address any Landscaping Needs

No rental property assessment is complete without a thorough inspection of the landscaping, and springtime is the perfect season to address landscaping needs. Winter snows, freezing temperatures, and more can cause sprinkler lines to break, soil to erode, and other issues. But if you catch these problems early, you can get ahead of the seasonal rush and make landscape maintenance easier for the rest of the year.

Not Sure Where to Start?

It is important to make inspecting the health of your rental property a top priority every spring, but finding the time or knowing where to start can be a challenge. Instead, consider hiring a property management company like Real Property Management to help you keep your valuable investment properties in good shape year-round. Contact your local Real Property Management office to learn more.

If you're a landlord, then you know that keeping your rental properties in good condition is important. Not only do you need to make sure the property is livable and up to code, but you also need to make sure it's as energy efficient as possible. Energy prices are constantly changing and can be quite volatile at times. Making your rental properties more energy efficient can help protect you from price fluctuations and can even be a tax write off! In this article, we will discuss some easy ways to improve the energy efficiency of your rental properties.