Understanding routine inspections

One of the first things a savvy landlord does after acquiring a new investment property is to engage a property manager.

If you have a multiple-property portfolio, it’s best to get a professional to look after it for you, and one of the essential services these professionals provide is to conduct routine inspections.

Whether it’s every three or six months, these inspections ensure tenants are taking care of your properties to the standard required by the lease they signed.

Blink property managers like to take property management to the next level. Rather than just ticking off planned inspections and making note of cleanliness or required maintenance, Blink managers look after your property holistically. A keyway they do this is by identifying future problems in the early stages and helping you solve them before they become much more costly down the track. This helps reduce costs and maximise the value of your overall portfolio.

But even though it’s a premium service, we’re not licensed tradespeople. Property owners need to pay attention to inspection reports and take responsibility to ensure the right actions are taken.

Here are a few things about inspections and maintenance that you might not know.

If we can’t see it…

Landlords are sometimes surprised to find they have cracked tiles on their roofs and want to know why no mention of this was made in any inspection reports. Standard inspections don’t look at roof tiles and they also don’t look within walls to spot plumbing leaks. So even if you’ve had regular inspections, it’s not a bad idea to engage other professionals to check what we can’t see.

Qualified tradespeople are often able to pick up faults or potential problems that are invisible to the naked eye. These problems, if unchecked, can develop into highly visible and expensive problems later. We do encourage owners to get annual building inspections to see if there are hidden problems that only trained tradie eyes could detect.

What we can do

If a property manager attends a routine inspection and there’s damage that’s worth more than one week’s rent, the manager can serve the tenant a breach. Depending on which state they’re in, the tenant will have a certain period to rectify the issue.

If the issue is minor, such as cleaning, we give them a reminder of their obligations and let them know it needs to be better. If they haven’t rectified it by the next inspection, we issue them a breach.

Some issues, such as a mouldy shower, may need a professional to clean it properly. Property managers will point a tenant in the right direction to organise that.

If breaches fail to be rectified, we can go down the path of beginning the notice to leave process.

What we might not do

A property manager doesn’t always call an owner about every small bit of damage but instead will note it in the inspection report. Owners need to take responsibility by reading inspection reports and acting on necessary maintenance.

Under the law, owners are accountable. It’s not the property manager’s responsibility.

A property manager might note suspicious marks or a water leak in the report. If an owner doesn’t act on that maintenance and then has an insurance claim later down the track, insurers will ask to see previous routine inspection reports. If there is something that could have been prevented by the owner, they may reject the claim.

Strike early to save

Pre-emptive maintenance is a good idea, especially on things like servicing for air conditioning, roller doors and fans.

Servicing your air conditioning in winter is cheaper, for example than if it was in the middle of summer when the hot weather means a backlog of repairs.

Likewise with roller doors. By the time they break down, they’re no longer just checking the motor, but the whole contraption. Pre-emptive servicing keeps everything running smoothly and for a fraction of the cost of replacing the door. Sliding doors are another one you can get checked once a year for a small call out fee, but if you don’t and they end up needing replacing, it can cost thousands.

If you have a handyman going out for a job, get them to check sliding doors and whatever else while they’re there too. This saves money on multiple callout fees.

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