City Rental Inspection Blues

A millimeter-wide four inch tear in a window screen got the best of me today during today’s city rental inspection in a new town. Fortunately I kept my mouth shut but have been steaming about it all day.

I have no issues with the idea of keeping a home in a safe manner. I’ve heard of horror stories from years gone by in the city of Chicago where tenants had to live in deplorable conditions at the mercy of their cheap and stingy landlords, placing more value on the almighty dollar than their tenants’ health and safety. So I get why someone thought rental inspections would be a good way to combat that.

But, the government has gone way, way to far.

We in our LLC have decided to keep our properties safe because it is the right thing to do. And, keep them a little nicer yet to attract the *better* renters. We have 4 properties now, 3 in two cities that have rental inspections.  I don’t see much point in avoiding the cities that have rental inspections since so many do and that seems to be the trend.

But the idea that we need to keep these rental properties in a better condition than our own homes, probably better than the inspectors own homes, is just absolutely ridiculous.

So this 4” screen tear I am taking about, it’s about a millimeter wide.  And it’s actually one 4” tear, then another two 1.5” tears equally wide.  I don’t think a mosquito could make its way through.  I was told I need to “repair or replace” it. And no, there are no other windows in the house the same size.  And of course this window is right by the front door, so if we patch it it’s gonna look crappy since every tenant and their guests will see it all the time.  Would any reasonable person fix this on their own house? No. We didn’t even see it. The ironic thing is we have been meaning to patch two actual holes on two other screens since we closed two weeks ago, but the inspector didn’t see those. Now I wonder if I should fix those or just leave them for something for them to find next year.

Oh, and the other kicker. This inspector must have been using new math to determine the square footage of the rooms, and gave the max occupancy 2 people less than what it should have been! On one room I questioned it since she hadn’t actually measured; she then did and said it was close enough so we could have 2 people in that bedroom instead of 1. Then I measured after she left and had no idea what math she was using!! That bedroom was definitely big enough for two people, and the master big enough for 3. Now, as a landlord, it’s not in my best interest now to cram in a bunch of people, but if you can’t do that simple aspect of your job correctly…

She detected a slight gas leak in the utility room. I have no problem with that; we thought we had smelled gas in there a couple times before in the last week and told her we were planning to have the HVAC guy look at it when he was out there cleaning the furnace (which I figured the homeowners hadn’t done since they installed the furnace in 2007. We don’t get our own furnace cleaned, but we *do* change our furnace filters every 3 months, and since I doubt renters will, I figure a cleaning every 5 yrs is warranted). Suddenly, the furnace that she had no issue with *had* to be cleaned according to her inspection sheet and receipt for work sent in to the city. What?? Lesson learned-Don’t mention any other work you plan to do, because now it’s documented and gotta be done in a 30 day window. And the fact it’s 85 degrees in Chicago and the furnace won’t be used for several months apparently makes no difference.

She tested all the outlets with one of those little $8 testers. I thought I had done that myself, maybe it was the other property that I closed on the same day. But when I asked, how could the outlet be wired wrong, she admitted it’s probably always been like that. Does any inspector test all the outlets before issuing a Certificate of Occupancy?? Doubtful.  I’ve only seem regular home inspectors test the occasional outlet around here.  So this outlet that’s been wired wrong since 1977 is suddenly an emergency that needs to be fixed in 30 days.

The only other thing found was a cracked outlet plate. That’s it. But because this list is *so* long, instead of the next inspection being two years from now, it’s one year. Really???  And seriously, I was copping *no* attitude, I was warm and friendly since I don’t think getting on an inspectors bad side is going to help.

What gets me is that there are things that seriously could cause a *real* health and/or safety problem in any house. None of which I will mention here since I don’t want to give any city inspectors who happen across this after Googling “city inspectors” any ideas. Let’s say things we were planning to check and/or take care since we do them in our own homes.

Now on to the other inspection tomorrow with an inspector I’ve met with once before for an hour and a half rental inspection of a 1100 sq ft 3 bed 1 bath crawl space home. Yes, seriously. And he didn’t go in the crawlspace.  Who then required we put backflow preventers on the hose bibs even though you don’t have to do that when you sell a house in that city! This inspector is also paranoid about renters plugging in extension cords into the ceiling outlet where the garage door opener plugs in. He said I should replace the ceiling outlet with a single port GFCI, although he won’t make me on that house since the garage door opener is so old he said it will probably trip the GFCI for no reason.  Now that I think about it, I seriously wonder if that requirement is even code on new construction anywhere!! And why was he worried about that when there were four other outlets in that one car garage?? Last thing I need is a renter on a ladder in the garage trying to reset a ceiling GFCI every other day!! I’ve looked at Menards, HD, and Lowe’s and couldn’t find a single port GFCI, and the closest version is $20! And if a renter really, really wants to plug in an extension cord into the ceiling to do some work in the garage, and really needs to use that outlet, he’ll just unplug the garage door opener first!

But now that we need to spend time and funds on other these stupid things, perhaps we should rethink our strategy and just take care of what the inspectors care about, since we are running a business over here!

So much for the point of having the rental inspections keep things *safer* for renters!

And we need to revisit our rental move-out checklist and pay attention to possible damage to items the inspectors care so much about like screens with tiny tears or cracked wallplate covers.

And I need to change my lease to include that it be mandatory that a tenant sign off for permission for the city to do their rental inspection; I don’t want to get into a situation where some jerk renter won’t sign their permission for a rental inspection, causing the LLC to be fined by the city for not having the property inspected. How that works when once I give 24 hour notice to a renter to come in they still need to sign to allow the city to inspect I do not understand. You know what, I’ll make it a POA line item on the lease for the purposes of city rental inspection only; if a renter won’t sign off on that, I don’t want them in my property!

I’d be interested in your city rental inspection stories, and if any of you are able to negotiate items…although my fear is what you negotiated away this year could be a problem next year anyway. I don’t want to say what cities specifically I am dealing with; I will say they are in the western and northwestern suburbs of Chicago.