The final inspection is booked and you are looking at the same list everybody looks at. Tenant chasing a bond back, or owner handing the keys to the next person, it barely changes. It is all small and it is all quick, as long as it goes in one visit instead of five.
Wear is not damage, and that is the whole argument
In NSW a tenant is not responsible for fair wear and tear, which is the deterioration that comes from ordinary use over time. Carpet flattened along the traffic path is wear. A burn in that carpet is damage. Faded paint is wear. A hole in a wall is damage. NSW Fair Trading sets out the actual position and any dispute goes to the Tribunal, so read their guidance rather than arguing it from first principles.
In practice that is filling and patching walls, repainting before the inspection and a yard tidy up, usually inside one visit.
The nine things that come up, property after property
- Picture hook holes and wall plugs, filled properly and touched up.
- A door with a handle mark or a hole from being swung into a wall.
- Torn flyscreens, which come up on nearly every inspection.
- Missing or broken window locks and winders.
- Blinds and curtain tracks that no longer run.
- Silicone in the bathroom that has gone black.
- Grout in the shower that has cracked or is missing.
- Marks on walls in hallways and behind doors.
- A garden that has been left to go over.
A badly filled hole shows more than the hole did
Picture hook holes get filled, sanded flush and touched up in the actual wall colour. Leave the filler white and the inspector sees it from the doorway. Touch it up with the wrong white and it shows even more, because there are dozens of whites and every one of them is slightly different.
If the original tin is gone, cut a chip from inside a wardrobe and a paint shop can match it. On a wall with several holes, repainting the whole wall corner to corner is faster and looks better than spotting up six patches.
Wall to wall, floor to ceiling. Paint stops at a corner, not in the middle of a wall, because that is where the eye stops too.
The garden is the cheapest thing on the list and the one everyone forgets
An overgrown yard is the fastest way to lose a chunk of a bond. Beds cleared, edges cut back, everything carted away. Half a day, and it changes what the whole property looks like in the final inspection photos.
Ten repairs, one visit, one quote
Ten small repairs done together cost a fraction of ten separate bookings, because most of the cost of a small job is getting there. Walk the property with your phone and photograph the lot before you ring anyone. That gets you one quote instead of five.
If you own it, the empty fortnight is the opportunity
Some jobs can only be done between tenancies. A full repaint, a floor that needs work, a bathroom regrout. If the place is going to sit empty for a fortnight, that fortnight is worth more than the rent it is not earning.
If the bathroom is the room letting the place down, there is a cheaper order to do things in.
