As the owner of a rental property, it is your landlord's duty to ensure that your property is safe for the tenants inhabiting it. Should someone get injured on the property, you could be found liable if you allowed the property to fall into an unsafe condition.
Regular inspections can help, but you can do more. These rental property safety tips will help you evaluate the safety of your rental property.
1. Ongoing and Seasonal Maintenance
Some safety hazards only occur during certain seasons. This could be an excessive amount of rain flooding areas of the property, mold growth on concrete that makes it slippery, or an overgrown brush with thorns. Performing ongoing maintenance on the property and the surrounding landscape ensures your rental property stays safe. It also allows you to inspect the property and look for any potential safety risks. Perhaps the front walk leading to the entrance of the property cracks and becomes uneven. This presents a tripping hazard that you wouldn’t know about without regular inspection.
2. Check Fire Safety
Your rental home needs to have plenty of smoke detectors that are in working order. Check the ones in your rental home by testing them and replacing the batteries. You could even upgrade them to ones that detect more than just smoke.
It’s also helpful to have a property inspector or electrician inspect the property. The leading cause of fire is a neglected electrical system. You should have the home inspected when you first buy it and then periodically every year of ownership. This lets you fix any problems in a timely manner and prevent electrical fires.
3. Look at the Roof
Water leaking into the home through the roof creates a danger to the tenants living in the home. The trapped moisture will create the ideal environment for mold to grow. This creates a dangerous health hazard and can eventually render the home uninhabitable.
If the moisture leakage is large enough, it will eventually compromise the structural integrity of the support beams and ceiling material. This can result in it falling and potentially hurting someone in the home.
4. What Is the Security Like?
While the surrounding neighborhood may have a low crime rate, don’t let this lull you into a false sense of security. You can improve the safety and security of your tenants by installing a security system. It could be a passive system or one that allows for active monitoring. For the most security, there should be sensors on the doors and windows. You then have the option of including the security system as an added amenity in the lease or having your tenants create and pay for their own monitoring service.
5. Lighting
What kind of exterior lighting does your rental property have? Adding a few outside lights can make the property safer for your tenant. The additional lights will illuminate the ground around your property, making it easier to walk around at night. The lights can also reduce the risk of crime, as the lights make the home less inviting. For energy efficiency, you can install lights on a timer or those that are motion-activated.
Have Help With Your Rental Property Safety
If this is your first rental property, it can be hard to know what to look for when it comes to safety. Working with a property manager can make this task easier. You can use their experience to guide you. Your property manager can perform regular inspections and provide suggestions for improving rental property safety.
Schedule an appointment with one of our experienced property managers today and make your rental home safer.
