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12 Things Every Landlord Should Do NOW to Prepare Rentals for Winter

Drew Sygit
2 min read
12 Things Every Landlord Should Do NOW to Prepare Rentals for Winter

As the cold approaches, it’s the duty of every landlord, be they property manager or real estate investor managing directly, to prepare their properties for the upcoming season. That’s no small amount of work, done correctly. Let’s take a look:

Fill All Gaps in the Exterior

Gaps around doors, windows, pipes, conduits, and vents cause significant heat loss when unattended. Furthermore, as the cold drives pests like mice and roaches to find warmth and easy food sources, those gaps can easily become the ports of entry for the annoyances, and that’s a whole new layer of expenses.

Get Preventative Maintenance for the Heater

Every year, you should pay for a standard preventative-maintenance routine for the heater on every one of your properties — including a filter change. It’s a small expense today that will save you a much larger expense in the future.

Check the Attic Insulation

Most of the time, this is a two-minute task involving sticking your head into the attic and shining a flashlight around. Like the previous point, though, on those occasions when there is a serious problem, you’ll be very happy you found out and ordered corrective measures before you discover that your tenant is overworking your heater.

Inspect the Roof

The wintertime is by far the most difficult time to deal with missing shingles or other roof-related problems. Make sure you don’t have them before they’re buried under the snow.

inspect-exterior-rehab

Clean the Gutters

Gutters that get clogged during the fall can cause poor drainage of future melting snow, which can in turn cause all kinds of problems down the road.

Related: Winter is Coming! The Investor’s 7-Point Checklist to Prep Rental Properties for Colder Months

Winterize the Sprinklers

If you happen to have a sprinkler system, you’ll need to get all of the water emptied out of it before it freezes — failure will mean a cracked pipe and a useless sprinkler (and possibly a huge water bill) come spring!

Prune Anything Near the House

Snow and ice can make trees and shrubs sag and break. Rather than let that happen haphazardly — and potentially damage the house — trim before the snow hits.

Seal Cracks in the Driveway and Walkways

A small crack pre-winter can become a large crack by springtime just by the action of water freezing. A concrete sealer can help enormously.

Schedule Snow Removal Services

If you’re going to have someone else keep the driveway and walkways free of snow this winter, get the service lined up and scheduled now so it’s off your plate once the inevitable wintertime emergencies hit.

winter house

Check the Insulation Around the Pipes

Look for un-insulated pipes, and get (at the minimum) foam sleeves around them so they won’t freeze when temperatures drop. Frozen pipes burst easily, so don’t let them freeze in the first place.

Check Smoke and CO2 Detectors

Tenants tend to keep circulation through the house at a minimum over the winter, so you need to make sure that the emergency detectors are functional and have fresh batteries.

Related: 7 Easy Tips for Filling Vacancies in the Dreaded Winter

Possibly Clean the Ducts

This one isn’t necessary every year, but at least every three years, you should have a professional come in and clean the heating ducts thoroughly to keep the heater working efficiently for as long as possible.

If you don’t have a property manager, that’s a list that can easily take up a few days for every house you run (and require you to have a mountain of handyman skills on top of it). If you do have a property manager, you can simply forward this list to your PM and ask them to let you know when it’s done — problem solved!

Anything to add to this list?

Let me know with a comment!

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.