- Before you move out, you may want to do one last look around the place...
Move-out inspections are the final moment where landlords get to see exactly how a tenant has been living in their unit. While some tenants leave behind normal wear and tear, many leave evidence of strange modifications, unsanitary living conditions, unusual items, garbage, and unexplainable damage.
In many cases, these situations indicate a failure to screen applicants to avoid preventable risk. Landlords who manage their own properties are more likely to experience severe damage than those who use professional property managers. Pros, like the team from Sugarland property management company Green Residential, have the experience needed to screen more rigorously and conduct regular inspections. Unfortunately, many landlords only realize this after discovering a mess once a tenant moves out.
Below are some of the weirdest things landlords find in recently vacated units.
- Unauthorized structural modifications
One of the most common discoveries after a tenant moves out is an altered structure that was never permitted. These changes usually violate the lease as well as building codes and safety standards. Unfortunately, structural modifications can be costly to repair.
- Wall removal. Sometimes tenants remove walls in full or in part to open up the space, not knowing those walls are load-bearing structures that compromise the building’s integrity.
- Extra doors. When tenants want another exit, sometimes they cut a hole in the wall and install a door. This happens frequently when tenants rent out a room and want to provide a private entrance.
- Ceilings opened for storage. When there’s no attic, sometimes tenants cut holes in the ceiling for storage.
· Improperly installed permanent fixtures. Many tenants install shelving and bars in ways that violate building codes and need to be removed.
These modifications aren’t accidents. They’re intentional and costly for landlords.
- Strange DIY projects gone wrong
DIY creativity is great but it can damage a rental property. Some tenants try their hand at home improvement without experience – just a YouTube video and a set of tools they’ve never used before. For example, landlords frequently encounter concrete used to level surfaces indoors, paint jobs done with mops or sponges without primer, new flooring installed over mold or rot, and rerouted electrical wiring that creates a fire hazard.
Other landlords have found unapproved underground bunkers, trap doors leading to full rooms under the house, a brand new paint job, and messages burned into the grass using weed killer.
- Strange items
Some landlords have reported finding strange items left behind, including 3,000 beer cans (some filled with urine), a hidden room built behind the kitchen cupboard, snakes in the walls, and more.
- Hoarding and poor sanitation
Some of the most shocking move-out discoveries come in the form of extreme neglect and hoarding. In these cases, landlords need to hire biohazard teams to come in full hazmat suits to clean before they can make the unit rentable again.
Landlords have walked into vacant units to find trash, furniture, and old packaging stacked to the ceiling, along with rodents and insects crawling all over smelly trash bags. The biggest nightmare for landlords is finding sinks and toilets clogged or destroyed intentionally.
Although hoarding increases the risk of fire and health hazards, landlords can’t legally evict someone solely for hoarding since it’s considered a protected disability. To remove a hoarder, a landlord must give them time to remediate the problem first if it poses a direct threat to health and safety. However, sometimes landlords aren’t aware of the problem until after the tenant moves out.
- Hidden damage behind obvious cover-ups
Sometimes tenants try to hide damage instead of reporting it or allowing their landlord to find it. These DIY repair efforts often make the problem worse and force landlords to spend more money on repairs. These DIY jobs can include painting over mold or water damage, covering holes with furniture or tape, stuffing socks in drywall before patching a hole, installing rugs over damaged hard flooring, and using temporary materials to patch walls like cardboard or caulk.
Costly property damage is preventable
Most extreme discoveries at move-out are the result of weak tenant screening, lack of inspections, and no lease enforcement. If you own rental property, the easiest way to prevent these issues is to hold every applicant to high screening standards, bake regular inspections every three months into the lease, and enforce lease violations without exception.
Landlords who skip inspections and don’t enforce lease violations become easy targets for rogue tenants who watch too many home improvement shows.