4 Tips for Vacation Rental Inspections

More space and privacy. Flexible check-ins and outs. More amenities. Cost savings for longer stays and larger groups. Authentic local experiences. A chance to prepare your own meals. Kid and pet friendliness. These are just some of the reasons why travelers are opting for vacation rentals over hotels.

“There’s been a big shift in the vacation rental landscape,” said Danielle Finch of HomeToGo, a vacation rental site, in an interview with Forbes. “The majority of vacation homes now offer more standardized amenities, akin to what you would find in a hotel, while also providing a more personalized and authentic experience.”

As vacation homes increase in popularity among travelers, they also gain traction with investors. You may find yourself inspecting more properties buyers are purchasing not for themselves, but for visitors.

When doing vacation rental inspections, or inspections of homes buyers are purchasing with the intent to list as short-term rentals, your standards don’t change. You’re still performing a visual, non-invasive examination of the property’s systems and components. However, to provide a better service to your clients, it helps to consider that short-term rentals will be utilized more like hotels than homes.

Here are four tips to cater your inspections of vacation rentals.

1. Understand how travelers live differently.

When people vacation, they want to unwind. For many, that means practicing different etiquette or habits than they do at home. Vacationers are more likely to use amenities, like decks and pools, often. Owners and their cleaning staff have to clean between each visitor, which means lots of sheets and towels being laundered. Folks with longer stays are also more likely to do more dishes and wash more clothes when they pack lighter.

By understanding how travelers inhabit short-term rentals differently, you can make better recommendations during your vacation rental inspections. For example, consider an aging deck. Without predicting the deck’s life expectancy (that’s outside your standards of practice), you can warn clients that the vacationers’ frequent use of the deck may result in it failing faster—particularly in moisture-rich areas where wet wood rot is common. You can then let them know what type of maintenance they may need to extend the deck’s life before it fails.

2. Pay special attention to safety.

One of the top reasons buyers get vacation rental home inspections is to discover what’s potentially unsafe in their future homes. For people buying short-term rentals, safety is an even bigger concern.

A word of warning: Some standards of practice and home inspector insurance policies have exclusions for evaluations of safety alone as these are the jobs of safety inspectors, not home inspectors. When judging a system or component to be a risk to potential buyers and tenants, that safety concern must be connected to damage, deterioration, improper installation, or another tangible defect or deficiency within your inspection standards.

With vacation rental inspections, Jeff Clark of Trident Inspection Group in California pays special attention to safety features, looking for things like:

Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

Water temperatures for scalding potential.

Anti-tip brackets on heavy appliances and furniture.

Emergency lighting.

Posted floor plan showing escape routes.

If Clark doesn’t see safety items like the ones above, he recommends the buyers invest in them.

3. Recommend fail-safes for seasonal or frequently vacant properties.

Inspecting a short-term rental property on the beach or by a ski resort? Such properties are likely to experience seasonality, which can lead to frequent vacancies. Vacant properties can experience additional problems like unidentified clogs or leaks. In older properties, cast iron waste lines underneath slabs can potentially crack, corrode, and rust during vacancies, Clark said.

When inspecting a short-term rental property that’s been vacant for a while, run more water to ensure there aren’t clogs or other types of damage. To help owners manage vacancies, let them know where the water shut off valves are. Also, encourage them to install flow meters and moisture detectors to alert them of leaks that occur while they’re away.

4. Suggest a maintenance plan or vacation rental inspection checklist.

As a home inspector, you’ve likely distributed your fair share of maintenance checklists to clients—either as an add-on to your reports or via tips on your social media profiles. As an additional form of customer service, Clark recommends a vacation rental maintenance guide, like this one from Lodgify. 

If you’re handing out vacation rental inspection checklists, don’t forget to add annual inspections! For extra credit, you can also call out potential long-term or maintenance costs the owner may experience based on your short-term vacation rental inspection findings.

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Stephanie Jaynes is the Marketing Director for InspectorPro Insurance, which offers ASHI members exclusive benefits through its program: InspectorPro with the ASHI Advantage. Through risk management articles in the ASHI Reporter and on the InspectorPro website, InspectorPro helps inspectors protect their livelihood and avoid unnecessary risk. Get peace of mind and better protection with InspectorPro’s pre-claims assistance and straightforward coverage. Learn more at inspectorproinsurance.com/ashi-advantage.

Note: The Managing Risk column with InspectorPro Insurance provides home inspectors with tips to protect their businesses against insurance claims

Opinions or statements of authors are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of ASHI, its agents, or editors. Always check with your local governmental agency and independently verify for accuracy, completeness, and reliability.