Lease & Risk

Your Incoming Inspection Could Be More Important Than Your Lease

Landlords understandably spend a great deal of time thinking about the lease agreement.

But when a dispute arises about the condition of the property, another document becomes critically important:

The incoming inspection.

The lease establishes the contractual relationship.

The incoming inspection establishes a baseline for the property's condition.

Without a reliable baseline, it becomes much harder to establish whether something was already damaged, deteriorated during the tenancy or represents ordinary use over time.

A useful incoming inspection should be detailed enough that someone who was not present can later understand the condition that was recorded.

That can include:

•   walls and ceilings;

•   floors;

•   doors and locks;

•   windows and glass;

•   sanitary ware;

•   cupboards and fittings;

•   appliances supplied with the property;

•   exterior areas where applicable;

•   gardens or pools where relevant; and

•   existing marks, defects or damage.

Photographs are extremely useful, but photographs without context can also create problems.

A picture of a cracked tile is much more useful when it can be identified as:

Main bathroom — floor tile adjacent to shower — crack present at occupation.

The outgoing inspection can then be compared against an actual baseline.

Own the Property. Not the Admin.

If you're a hands-on landlord who wants to remain in control of your property without carrying all the administrative workload yourself, see whether LeasePilot is the right fit for you.