After twelve years in a property management career, senior agent Bryce Harper claimed to have received an important extraterrestrial message informing one of the most crucial processes in his line of work was completely wrong.
Responsible for reporting to landlords maintenance needs and the overall state of a property, routine inspections had been a ‘copy-paste’ task, left on the back-burner by Mr Harper and his agency… Until now.
In an emergency team meeting, Bryce revealed that an intelligent alien life form had reached out to him after months observing humanity. In his own words, ‘after intercepting hundreds of routine inspection reports sent to landlords, [they] became incredibly frustrated with the low level of detail included in those and felt the absolute need to intervene’.
Close encounters of third kind
A routine inspection is a visit conducted by the agent with the intention of checking if the premises are kept in a clean and tidy manner, or if there is any need for maintenance or even preventative maintenance.
These inspections are paramount for good management as they are one of the few (if not the only) opportunities the agent has to go through the property in person.
According to Queensland laws and standard lease agreements, property managers have the right to enter the property up to four times a year, to inspect and take pictures of the various areas throughout the property. The agent must give the residents a 7-day Entry Notice.
‘It’s not rocket science!’
In an ideal inspection, the property manager should be able to collect details about the condition of the property, from cleanliness and tidiness to need for repairs and note damage caused by either fair wear and tear or tenants.
With that in mind, for a thorough report to be provided to the landlord, the inspecting agent needs to be attentive to the property as a whole, from its structure, appliances, presentation, potential issues and more. They should provide an abundance of imagery with detailed descriptions of what was observed.
According to Bryce Harper, throughout his many years in property management, routine inspections had become an ‘auto-pilot process of copy-paste’, with low levels of attention to detail and, on several occasions, properties would go through the year without a single inspection.
Frustrated with this, the alien race had allegedly shared with Bryce Harper a PDF document to serve as an example of a decent Routine Inspection Report, claiming ‘it’s not rocket science!’. You can find the file HERE.
Signs (of damage)
Assuming a property is not presented to a satisfactory condition, the property manager has the opportunity to send a Notice to Remedy Breach, allowing them another 7 days to rectify the reported issues and then allowing the agent a chance to reinspect the property to evaluate if action has been taken to remedy the problems. Repeated breaches to the tenant can result in a Notice to Leave.
Also, with frequent routine inspections in place, property managers are able to address problems with the property during the tenancy, oftentimes avoiding more extensive maintenance with larger costs when the issue is addressed promptly.
Armed with hundreds of examples and some cryptic messages, the alleged alien race visited Mr Harper with the primary intent of sharing their vast knowledge on Real Estate affairs so that it could be passed on to the rest of humankind.
Although agreeing with the enlightenment provided by the extraterrestrials, many colleague agents believe Bryce had one too many open homes under the Queensland sun.
In your property’s day-to-day management, it is important to have a knowledgeable team making sure everything runs smoothly. At Odyssey Property Concierge, our highly experienced team works with smaller portfolios per agent, allowing our Property Managers to dedicate more time resolving such problems.
