Where the time goes #
Split an inspection into its parts and the visit is the small one.
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Work out which properties are due
From a schedule that usually lives in one person's head or one spreadsheet.
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Group them geographically so a round is worth driving
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Give the tenant notice and get an acknowledgement
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Handle the ones who cannot make it, and rebook
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Do the visit, photograph, take notes
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Turn the notes and photographs into a report a landlord will read
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Open the follow up actions
A repair, a tenant letter about a garden, a note about an unauthorised occupier, a certificate that turns out to be expiring.
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Chase those actions to closure, then record that the inspection cycle is complete
Steps one to four and six to eight are admin. That is most of the list, and in a portfolio of any size it is continuous, because inspections are on a rolling cycle rather than a season.
The notice rule shapes the scheduling #
In practice agencies give more, because a tenant who is not expecting you is a wasted journey. The knock on effect is that inspection scheduling is not a diary exercise, it is a negotiation with a person who works, and that turns one visit into three or four messages.
There is no single statutory interval for a periodic inspection of a private tenancy in England. The frequency normally comes from the management agreement or a landlord's insurer. That matters for automation: a rule about frequency is a rule your agency sets, not one the law sets, which makes it exactly the kind of thing that can be held consistently in a list rather than in memory.
The report is a transcription job #
A property manager comes back with thirty photographs, a set of notes and a mental list of three things to chase. Turning that into a report that a landlord can read, and into actions somebody will follow up, is the part that gets done at the end of the day and often tomorrow.
It is also the part that decides whether the inspection had any value: an inspection with no follow up trail is a visit, not a control.
Inspections also feed other queues. An expiring alarm, a boiler making a noise, a damp patch and a certificate that is closer to renewal than anybody thought all surface at inspections and then have to be handed over to maintenance and certificate chasing. Every handover is a place for something to be dropped.
Which parts run on rules #
Runs on rules
- Knowing which properties are due, and producing the list
- Issuing notice and recording that it was given, with the date
- Reminding the tenant, and rebooking a refusal
- Assembling photographs and notes into a consistent report
- Opening follow up actions and chasing them to closure
Needs a property manager
- Judging whether a property is being looked after
- Deciding whether damp is condensation or a defect
- Raising a difficult condition issue with a tenant
Why this queue is worth measuring #
Inspections are the easiest queue to quietly abandon, because nothing breaks immediately when one is missed. The cost turns up later, in a deposit dispute with no mid tenancy evidence, in a repair that was visible six months ago, or in a landlord asking what they have been paying a management fee for.
Two numbers are worth having. What share of inspections due in the last quarter actually happened, and what share of the actions raised at those inspections were closed?
If the first number is high and the second is low, the problem is not the visit, it is the trail afterwards, and that is rule driven work. The free tools will turn the message count into hours, and the plain explainers cover what automation can and cannot do with work like this.