DIY Vs. Professional: Which Rental Property Inspection Is Better?
“I’m neither buying a house nor selling one, so why should I spend my hard-earned money on just rental property inspection? Shouldn’t I DIY it?”
Once you’re onto renting your property, as a homeowner, you might question your decision regarding your rental inspections.
DIY vs. professional rental property, which one should you go with.
As a responsible property owner, ensuring that your rental property is well-maintained and compliant is important. And so, choosing between DIY and professional inspections becomes a paramount choice.
In this blog, we intend to compare both of the approaches, mentioning the advantages and drawbacks of each. This way, we intend to offer insights to help you make informed decisions that align with your expectations and needs.
DIY vs Professional Rental Property Inspections: Advantages
DIY Rental Property Inspections
Cost Savings
Of course, when you choose rental property inspection, one of the primary advantages you tend to cater to is significant cost savings.
By choosing DIY inspections, you end up avoiding professional inspection fees, as you’ll be conducting the inspection yourselves. And this becomes more thorough when you have the necessary knowledge and tools.
Flexibility and Convenience
With professional inspections, you need to schedule an inspection as per the inspector’s availability. But that’s not the case with DIY inspections.
DIY inspections will allow you to schedule and perform your assessments at your convenience. This can be particularly beneficial for you if you’re a property owner with multiple properties. You can then coordinate inspections without any dependency on external schedules.
Hands-On Understanding
Being a property owner means managing the property in the best possible way. And, for managing your property, you need to understand its intricacies.
Once you inspect on your own, you’ll gain first-hand experience and understanding of your rental unit. You’ll be able to identify potential issues and become more attuned to the property’s condition and “needs” over time.
Basically, you’ll know what steps to take and when to keep your property in the best possible condition.
Immediate Action
Being a property owner means taking immediate steps once issues are uncovered and identified. And with DIY inspections, this becomes quite easier.
These inspections empower you to take action up front. Without waiting for a scheduled professional inspection, you can promptly address issues. You can also prevent these issues from escalating into more significant and costly issues.
Professional Rental Inspections
Expertise and Experience
While all the advantages of DIY inspections, the experience and expertise you get through professional inspections are unmatchable.
With professional rental inspections, you bring specialized knowledge and experience to the table. The inspector’s expertise allows you to evaluate the property comprehensively.
Later, this ensures that all the aspects, including potential hidden issues, are thoroughly examined during the process.
Thorough and Unbiased Evaluations
When you choose to do a DIY inspection, you might overlook or ignore the issues that you feel are unimportant.
But with professional inspections, that is not the case. The professionals use an unbiased approach and cater to every issue with the same precision.
The professional assessments are thorough, so they leave no room for oversight. Obviously, this objectivity is important for identifying issues that might go unnoticed when you do DIY inspections.
Adherence to Standards and Regulations
Certified inspectors are well-versed when it comes to local building codes and regulations.
Not to mention, catering to these codes and regulations is equally important.
Professional inspectors ensure that your property complies with these standards. In return, this reduces the risk of legal issues and ensures the safety and well-being of your tenants.
Many of the property owners are unaware of the local standards and regulations. If you’re one such property owner, scheduling a professional inspector is better than DIY.
Advanced Tools and Technology
When you choose to conduct the inspection yourself, you don’t have the expertise or the advanced tools and technology.
But with professional inspections, all of this is part of the package.
During the professional inspection, inspectors use advanced tools and technology, like infrared cameras and moisture meters, to detect hidden issues.
With these tools, you get enhanced and accurate inspection results. Furthermore, you also get a more detailed and precise analysis of the property’s condition.
DIY vs Professional Rental Property Inspections: Disadvantages
DIY Rental Property Inspections
Limited Experience and Knowledge
Whether you own a single property or numerous properties, whatever the case is, you don’t have the experience in conducting inspections. And so, it’s safe to say that DIY property inspections may lack the expertise and knowledge that you get with professional inspections.
It might be challenging for you to identify hidden issues or understand the full scope of potential problems, especially without a background in property inspections.
Risk of Oversight
Without particular training or professionalism, there’s a high chance that you might overlook critical issues.
This oversight can later result in significant drawbacks and undetected problems, leading to delayed maintenance or repairs. Basically, these will potentially cause more extensive damage over time, which means extensive damage to your pockets.
Incomplete Assessments
Thoroughness is the major factor in home inspections. And DIY inspections might lack this factor.
Considering the lack of experience in DIY inspections, you might end up focusing on the visible issues. Most likely, you’ll neglect the hidden or hard-to-reach areas that, in other cases, professionals will assess more comprehensively.
Professional Rental Inspections
Cost
Professional inspections, of course, come with a cost, and you might not be ready to afford this sort of expense yet.
So, we can cater to this as one of the major drawbacks for you, especially if you own multiple properties.
But, again, if you weigh this expense against the potential long-term savings and benefits of early issue detection, this expense might be worth it.
Scheduling Challenges
When you opt for professional inspections, one of the major challenges that you face is coordinating schedules with inspectors and tenants.
You need to find a suitable time that’s feasible for both of the parties. For this, you need to adhere to flexibility and planning. At times, this potentially causes delays in the inspection process.
Limited Familiarity with Property
The inspector you hire might not have the same level of familiarity with the property as you.
Even though they bring expertise with property inspections, you possess unique insights into the specifics of your property. And inspectors might not fully grasp this.
Conclusion
In conclusion, getting a professional or DIY inspection is entirely your choice. Whatever suits you best.
But, if you ask for our recommendation, we’d recommend you go with a professional inspection. Even though it might be challenging to schedule this inspection, you can rest easy once scheduled. Not only will these ensure that all the potential issues are identified, but you also won’t face any legal issues soon.
To schedule a professional inspection, you can choose Noble Property Inspections. With the experts in our team, you can ensure that your property is thoroughly assessed and catered to.
