Property Inspections
Do you have rental properties in San Jose, Los Gatos, Campbell or Saratoga? Does your property management company inspect these rentals for you? Well, here’s one reason why regular inspections should be part of your property management regiments.
1) Drug Labs: There isn’t a day that another meth home is getting busted in San Jose and nearby cities where the tenants are using toxic chemicals to build designer drugs for sale. Keep in mind that if you are not careful, you could be prosecuted as the beneficiary of a drug trade since an aggressive DA could come after you to prove that the rental income you got from this home was drug money and therefore your home could lose your home.
2) Unauthorized pets: We were shocked to discover that the tenants at our Los Gatos property of our client was keeping livestock on the property despite agreeing to a pet clause which allowed them to only keep one dog on the property. The backyard was full of chicken droppings not the mention the noise that these chickens were making during early morning hours. The damage to the back yard grounds were also noted as part of our inspection.
3) Sublease: If you or your property manager is not inspecting your rental homes, how will you know if your tenants are renting the home by room? We encounter this situation a lot during the height of foreclosures where REO homes that we were marketing for banks had more than 4 or 5 un-related tenants. The owners were renting one room to each person.
4) Deferred Maintenance: If you are not inspecting your San Jose, Los Gatos, Campbell or Saratoga rentals, then the odds of you finding deferred maintenance problems are slim. We often discover termite, roof and other damages in our routine rental property inspections.
5) Rental Scams: Rental scams where someone could be posting a sign and collecting application fees are rampant in most hot rental markets. Without routine inspections.
Needless to say that if it was not for routine inspection the lease violations will go unnoticed and the damage to the property would continue. So, mark sure your property management company offers you documented reports of their routine inspections with photos, date along with recommendations.