Routine Internal Inspections with Pictures

There is a lot of power in pictures of your rental property.  Pictures say a thousand words.  And I will be honest here, this is where my fellow property managers (not in Asurent, I am talking in the industry in general here), really let down their Property Owners.

 

Why is that?  Well, let me walk you through a property that we are currently looking to help the Owner with.  She called us from one of our advertisements and asked if we would be open to taking a look at the property for her.  Here is the catch – it is currently being managed by a medford property management company here in Medford already.  Well isn’t that interesting!  How does a medford property manager let their customer service slip to the point where your own customer calls another company to have them look at their rental for them.  Well, I can’t speak for them, but I can take a guess: customer service is not at the forefront of their priorities.

 

In this particular instance, she called and asked us to perform a drive by the property and take a look for her.  One of the units is vacant, so she asked us to look as best we can and take a few pictures for her.  She could not understand why this unit had been vacant for going on 3 weeks now.  It is priced right (even less than market!!), is a newer age rental so it should be able to rent very quickly.  She was confused as her property management company told her that it was all cleaned up and ready to go.

 

So we performed a quick rental analysis and surveyed the unit.  I can see why it was not renting.

 

First off, it was in a neighborhood of other duplexes and nicer apartment buildings that were all landscaped very nicely.  Fresh bark, no exposed sprinkler lines, trimmed bushes, etc.  Her property was anything but that.  There was absolute bare dirt, exposed black 1/2″ sprinkler lines, unmanaged tress and shrubs as well as garbage in her front lawn area. (not to mention a sleeping bag stuffed into a tree/bush if you look hard enough)

 

Then you walk up to the house and you can peer into the rented out section of the duplex and see that an old yellow stained, nasty mattress was appropriately staged in that backyard. Now mind you, the occupied side of the duplex has a backyard fences that is only 3′ tall, so as you are walking to see the vacant rental, you can clearly see this mattress. Bad form.

 

Then you go around to the front of the house and the front door has a huge stain on it that is clearly from an animal scraping on it.  The exterior walls all were stained with random things.  And when we peered inside the front window, you can see that the rug was quite dirty in the entryway.

 

Since we didn’t see the inside, I can’t really speak to that, but based on the outside, I have personally already made my decision that this was not a property I would personally want to stay at.

 

My guess is that this is why this property is not renting. Anyways….if I was in her shoes I would want to have seen pictures of this property from my current property manager to know that is being adequately taken care of.

 

The summary of my post – If you live out of state (like this lady did), you should require that your property management company send you an internal inspection report routinely (and external).  Here at Asurent Property Management, we perform an internal inspection 45 days after any new Tenants move in, and then every 6 months going forward. This ensures that our Tenants are performing as expected and taking care of your property.  When the day is done, you are paying us to prevent problems from occurring, and the internal property management inspections is one way to ensure that your property is preserved and prevent unneeded large expenses.

 

Please call Asurent Property Management Medford if we can be of service to you: 541 816-4140.