Rental Turnover Make-Ready Visit

Purpose

A make-ready is a deadline job wearing a repair job's clothes. There is a signed lease with a date on it, and every hour of cure time, every part that has to be ordered, and every item that turns out to be a licensed trade eats that date from the far end where nobody is watching. The shops that lose this work are not the ones that do bad repairs. They are the ones that spent day one on cosmetic items because those were visible, and discovered on day four that the paint needed a second coat, the closet doors were on order, and the water heater was delivering hot enough to scald a child.

The outcome this guarantees: habitability items are resolved or escalated before anything cosmetic starts, long-cure and long-lead items are launched on the first visit, and the unit's condition on arrival is documented well enough to settle a deposit argument you were not in the room for.

Scope

Covers the between-tenancy make-ready of a residential rental unit: general repair, patching and paint, hardware, locks and rekey, minor plumbing and fixture work, appliance function checks, and the habitability sweep.

Explicitly not covered:

• Gas appliance service, panel or circuit work, drain replacement, and roofing. These get identified in the sweep, escalated the same day, and never attempted.
• Turnover cleaning and carpet. Sequence around them in step 7; they are a separate vendor with a separate acceptance.
• A punch list a manager sends after the unit is occupied. That is the punch list completion procedure.
• Any repair in pre-1978 target housing that disturbs painted surfaces past the EPA thresholds in 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E. That is a regulated renovation and goes to a certified renovator.

Roles and responsibilities

The procedure

1. Photograph the whole unit before touching anything. Every room from two corners, every appliance interior, every floor surface, the panel, the water heater, and the meter readings. This is the arrival baseline and it is the only thing that separates damage you found from damage you caused. Acceptance: a photo set that covers every room and every surface a deposit could be argued over, timestamped, before any tool leaves the truck. Wrong looks like starting work and photographing later. Stop rule: no baseline, no work. It costs about 15 minutes and it has settled more disputes than every other record in this procedure.
2. Run the habitability and life-safety sweep before any cosmetic item starts. Smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms present at the locations the adopted residential code requires and sounding on test; every required egress window opening from the inside without a tool; handrails and guards solid to a firm push; exterior door locks operating and deadbolts throwing full; GFCI protection present and tripping on test at kitchen, bath, exterior and garage receptacles. Acceptance: every one of these passes or is written down as failed with a photo. Stop rule: a gas odour means everyone leaves immediately, no switches touched, no lights, no phone used inside, and the utility called from outside. Any failed life-safety item is escalated to the lead the same hour, not logged for the final visit.
3. Launch the long-cure and long-lead items on the first visit. Anything with a recoat interval, a cure time, or a part that is not on the truck starts now: patch compound, primer, first paint coat, adhesive, ordered hardware, ordered appliance parts. Acceptance: every cure-bound item started on visit one, and every ordered part has a confirmed arrival date written on the ticket. Wrong looks like a beautiful visit one with all the quick wins done. Stop rule: if a part's arrival date lands after the re-occupancy date, that is a date problem, not a parts problem, and the lead calls the manager today.
4. Verify the hot water delivery temperature at the fixture, not at the appliance. Run the fixture farthest from the water heater for 3 minutes and read the delivered temperature with a probe thermometer. In a single-family or small residential unit the widely used anti-scald target is 120 F at the fixture, and appliance dial markings are not calibrated to it. Acceptance: at or below 120 F at the far fixture. Wrong looks like reading the tank dial and writing down what it says. Hazard: the water at the far fixture may already be over 130 F, where a child scalds in seconds, so open it with the probe in the stream and your hand out of it. Stop rule: over target, adjust the thermostat, allow a recovery period, and re-measure; if it will not come down, it is a mixing valve or an appliance fault and goes out of trade to a plumber. Note the opposite pressure in larger or commercial systems, where storing at a lower temperature raises a legionella concern and the accepted answer is hot storage with a thermostatic mixing valve delivering the lower temperature, not a turned-down tank.
5. Test every drain, supply, and shutoff under load. Fill each sink and tub, release, and watch the trap and the connections with a dry paper towel held under each joint for a slow count of twenty. Cycle every angle stop closed and open. Flush every toilet twice and check the base and the supply. Acceptance: paper towel dry at every joint, every stop turning and sealing, no rocking at any toilet base. Wrong looks like running the tap for five seconds and calling it good, which never loads a trap enough to weep. Stop rule: a stop that will not close is not left for the tenant to discover during a leak; replace it or escalate it, and never hand over a unit where the water cannot be shut off at the fixture.
6. Do the surface work in dependency order. Dust before clean, overhead before floor, patch before prime, prime before paint, second coat only after the stated recoat interval on the can. Acceptance: patches invisible under a light held flat against the wall and sighted from 3 feet, coverage uniform with no roller lap visible at a low angle. Wrong looks like a second coat applied inside the recoat window, which lifts the first. Hazard: sanding patches and scraping old coatings puts dust in the air that gloves and glasses do not address; use wet-sanding or dust extraction, and where the exposure warrants a respirator it runs under a 29 CFR 1910.134 program, not as a nuisance mask.
7. Verify what the next vendor covers, and what covers you. Confirm the cleaner's date. Anything you do after the clean puts dust back into a cleaned unit; anything the cleaner does after your paint can mark it. Acceptance: a written running order agreed with the manager naming who is in the unit on which day, and your dust-generating work finished before the cleaner's date. Wrong looks like two vendors in the unit on the same day, each undoing the other. Stop rule: if the cleaner is scheduled before your sanding is done, call the lead and move one of them rather than working around it.
8. Walk the unit against the date and hand over the keys with the open items named. Repeat the arrival photo set from the same positions. Rekey or replace exterior locks and confirm every key operates every matching lock. Acceptance: matched photo pairs for every room, every life-safety item passing on a second test, keys counted and signed for, and every open item named on the handover sheet with its owner and date. Wrong looks like a handover where the open items live in the tech's head. Stop rule: no keys change hands while a life-safety item is open unless the manager instructs it in writing, and that instruction goes on the sheet in their words.

The record this produces

Three artifacts, all attached to the job record. The arrival baseline photo set with timestamps. The habitability sweep sheet: each item, pass or fail, the reading where there is one (delivered water temperature, GFCI trip result, alarm test result), and the escalation time for any failure. The handover sheet: matched departure photos, the key count, the rekey record, and every open item with its owner and expected date.

Who reads it later: the manager settling a deposit against the arrival photos, the office when a tenant reports on day ten something the baseline shows was already there, the lead pricing the out-of-trade items, and the next tech in the unit, who needs to know the water heater has a plumber's visit pending rather than re-diagnosing it. The delivered temperature reading with a date beside it is the single field most likely to matter and the one most often left blank.

One pass through this procedure

Five calendar days to re-occupancy, three visits booked backwards from the date: 6.0 hours on day 1, 4.0 hours on day 3, 2.0 hours on day 5 held as buffer. Twelve hours total. Cleaner scheduled day 4.

Day 1, step 1: full baseline set, 0.3 hours, including a pre-existing burn mark on the kitchen counter that the outgoing tenant later disputed and the photo settled.

Day 1, step 2 FAILED on two items. No carbon monoxide alarm on the level served by the gas furnace, and the bedroom smoke alarm did not sound on its test button. Stop rule taken: escalated to the lead within the hour rather than logged. Both were in-trade and were replaced the same visit, then re-tested and photographed sounding.

Day 1, step 3: two coats of paint launched in the two rooms needing them, with the can's recoat interval respected, and a set of closet doors ordered with a confirmed day 3 arrival.

Day 1, step 4 FAILED and stayed failed. The far bathroom lavatory read 141 F after a 3 minute run against the 120 F acceptance, 21 F over. The tech turned the thermostat down, returned to it after a 2 hour recovery, and re-measured 133 F, still 13 F over. Stop rule taken at the second reading: out of trade. The lead called the manager that afternoon; a plumber was booked for day 4 to fit a thermostatic mixing valve, and the manager elected to hand over on schedule with that item open and named on the handover sheet.

Day 3, steps 5 through 7: drains and stops loaded and dry at every joint, closet doors arrived and hung, second paint coat, all sanding finished before the day 4 cleaner.

Day 5, step 8: matched departure photos, both alarms re-tested sounding, four keys handed over against a signed count, and one open item on the sheet: hot water delivery temperature, plumber's mixing valve fitted day 4, delivered temperature to be re-measured by the shop on the first tenant service call. Closed at 11.4 of the 12.0 hours booked.

What the sequence bought: the temperature failure surfaced on day 1, which left four days to get a plumber in. Found on the day 5 walk, it would have been a handover with hot water a tenant's child could scald in, or a missed date. Nothing about the item was urgent-looking; it was on visit one only because step 4 sits ahead of every cosmetic item in this procedure.

References

• EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E, for the pre-1978 disturbance thresholds.
• OSHA Respiratory Protection, 29 CFR 1910.134, for the program behind any respirator used during sanding or scraping.
• NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code, in the edition your authority having jurisdiction has adopted, together with the smoke and carbon monoxide alarm and emergency escape opening provisions of your adopted residential code, which bind the property owner and reach the shop through the sweep in step 2.
• Manufacturer instructions for the specific water heater and any thermostatic mixing valve, which govern setpoint and adjustment; the 120 F delivered target is the widely used residential anti-scald figure and your local landlord-tenant or housing code may state its own, so confirm which applies before you set one.
• See related: the punch list completion procedure, which owns lists received after occupancy.