Rental properties are ideal investments if you want to generate a recurring income. With that in mind, it's important to look after them properly.
You need to keep your properties well-maintained, and inspecting them regularly is key for this. However, you also need to maintain a good tenant-landlord relationship, and frequent inspections could cause issues.
In this guide, we'll discuss rental property inspections so you can determine how often you should conduct them. Keep reading for more.
When Can You Inspect a Rental Property?
According to Idaho Rental Laws, a landlord can carry out rental property inspections whenever they want, provided they don't violate tenant privacy rights when doing so.
This primarily means you can't show up unannounced. This can be seen as harassment, and they'll then have the right to break their lease.
Tenant's Rights in Boise
All tenants have a right to quiet enjoyment of their homes. This doesn't have to specifically be laid out in the lease. Tenants have an implied covenant of quiet enjoyment, so you can't turn up unannounced and expect to be let into the property even if you own it.
Quiet enjoyment means that a landlord won't do anything to disturb the peace of tenants. Most states have strict laws that state landlords need to give tenants notice before entering a rental unit. Boise doesn't have any such property inspection law, but every lease needs to include a clause that specifies how and when they can enter a property.
Landlord's Rights in Boise
There are times when a landlord can enter a rental property, and it's important to know when these are. This could be if you suspect the tenant has abandoned the property or if they have already given you permission.
You can also enter at any time if there's an emergency. For example, if there's a water leak or a neighbor reports smoke.
How Often Should You Perform Rental Property Inspections?
While there's no set restriction on how many property inspections you can carry out, what you need to determine is how many should you do. Even when given notice, inspections can disturb tenants to some degree.
This can be the case even if they're ideal tenants. If you want to enter the property too often, they're likely to get upset.
A lot of property owners choose to do routine inspections either seasonally/quarterly or annually. You can set this out in the lease so that tenants will be aware of this arrangement.
Before each inspection, you need to give tenants reasonable notice. Most people consider this to be about 48 hours as a minimum, but it can be ideal to provide more.
Professional Property Inspections
Regular inspections are important if you want to ensure reasonable property maintenance. You can carry them out whenever you want as long as you provide reasonable notice to your tenants.
Rental property inspections can be a bit complicated, but working with a professional property manager can make things much easier. Next Step Realty Management has been helping landlords in Boise with inspections and a range of other real estate operations since 1999.
Take a look at our property management page to find out more about how we can help you.