The Property Turnover Inspection SOP

Purpose

To produce, from a single walk of a vacant unit, a graded findings record a property manager can act on immediately, forward to an owner without rewriting, and defend if it is questioned. The vacancy between tenancies is the only window where a unit is fully accessible with nobody's schedule to work around, and this inspection exists to make sure that window is spent on the right work rather than on whatever the outgoing tenant happened to complain about.

Scope

Applies to any interior walk of a vacant residential unit performed for a property manager, owner or association between tenancies. Covers the systems and components your trade is qualified to assess, plus observation and reporting of conditions outside your trade.

Does not cover: determination of security deposit liability, certification of code compliance, occupancy certification, or valuation. Those are separate exercises performed by separate parties, and a contractor's record that appears to do any of them will be used as if it did.

Roles and responsibilities

Definitions

• Make-ready: the work performed during turnover to return a unit to rentable condition.
• Finding: an observed condition, stated physically. Distinct from a recommendation.
• Access-driven cost: work whose main cost is getting into the unit rather than the task itself.

Safety screen, before any inspection begins

A vacant unit is not a safe unit. Utilities may be partly isolated, equipment may have been tagged out and forgotten, and nobody has been present to notice anything developing. Run this before the walk, not during it.

• Gas odor on entry: everyone leaves the building immediately. Nothing gets switched on or off, no lights, no phone used inside. Call the gas utility emergency line from outside and upwind, then the manager.
• A carbon monoxide alarm sounding: leave for fresh air, call the fire department from outside, do not re-enter to test whether it is genuine.
• Anything found deliberately isolated - a valve closed and tagged, a breaker off and taped, a gas cock in the off position: find out why before restoring it. Restoring an isolation somebody made on purpose is how a previously identified fault becomes a fire in an empty building. If nobody can tell you why, it stays off and it goes in the record.
• Water present near energized equipment, wiring or a panel: nobody touches it and nobody stands in it. Cut power at the supply if the disconnect can be reached from a dry position outside the affected area.
• Any work inside equipment: de-energize, lock and tag the energy-isolating device, and verify dead with a meter proven on a known live source immediately before and after. For mechanical and stored-energy isolation that is 29 CFR 1910.147; where the equipment is electrical, the governing rule is 29 CFR 1910.333(b)(2) instead, because 1910.147 excludes electric utilization installations. The proving-before-and-after step is NFPA 70E 120.5 in either case. A construction-classified job falls under 29 CFR 1926.417 for circuits.
• A pressure vessel or water heater that has been sitting isolated: do not operate or test the relief valve to see what happens. Inspect, report, and let the make-ready work order handle it.
• A persistent sewer odor: refill the traps and re-check before reporting a defect. Dry traps in a unit that has been empty for weeks are the ordinary cause and they are not a plumbing fault.

Procedure

1. Confirm vacancy and authority in writing before dispatch. The work order names who authorized the inspection, confirms the unit is unoccupied, and states who holds the key. A unit the manager believes is vacant and is not turns an inspection into an unlawful entry question.

2. Pull the unit's history before the walk. Prior work orders, prior findings, prior access problems. A finding you reported eight months ago that was declined is a different item from one you are seeing for the first time, and the record should say so. Five minutes, and the step most often skipped.

3. Run the safety screen above. Findings from the screen are recorded and reported immediately, not held for the written record.

4. Walk the systems in a fixed order, every time. Order matters less than consistency: a fixed sequence stops the walk being driven by whatever caught the tech's eye. A workable sequence is supply and shutoffs, then heating and cooling, then water heating, then electrical distribution and devices, then fixtures and drainage, then life-safety devices, then the envelope and access hardware. Record the sequence in the file so the next tech walks it the same way and the two records are comparable.

5. Grade every finding at the moment you record it. Grading later, from notes, is where the record loses its value. The rule is stated in full below.

6. State cause factually, never conclusively. "Impact damage consistent with a door handle contacting the wall" is a finding. "Tenant damage" is a determination with money attached, and it is the manager's to make.

7. Photograph to the standard. Two per finding: one establishing the location with something identifying in frame, one close on the condition. A close-up alone cannot be placed in a unit by anyone reading it later.

8. Deliver the findings record within one business day, in the manager's format, with no pricing on it. A record with prices reads as a sales document and gets negotiated instead of acted on. Pricing follows on request, as a separate quote.

9. Convert to quote only when asked, split into required and recommended blocks so partial approval is possible.

10. Re-walk after make-ready. A short second pass against the record, confirming and closing each corrected item. Without it, the record is a list of things somebody meant to do.

The grading rule

Unit of analysis is the individual finding, in a single unit, on a single inspection.

• Grade A, blocks re-occupancy. A safety or habitability condition: no heat, no hot water, no water, no power, an active leak, a gas or combustion issue, a life-safety device that does not function or is past its stated replacement date, or an exterior door or window that does not secure. Corrected before the incoming tenant takes possession, without exception.
• Grade B, make-ready. Assign when the item requires interior access AND either it degrades function now OR it is expected to need attention within one tenancy term. Both halves matter: interior access is what makes the vacancy the right moment, and the function-or-horizon test is what keeps the list honest.
• Grade C, deferred. Documented, scheduled at next service or next turnover, with the reason for deferring stated.

The promotion rule. A Grade C finding whose only real cost driver is access gets promoted to Grade B while the unit is open. This is the rule that earns the inspection its keep, and it is the one techs forget, because a small item genuinely does not feel urgent. It is not about urgency. It is about the fact that the same task costs more once somebody lives there.

Filled-in artifact: a completed turnover record

Unit 2B, walked in 1.5 hours. Seventeen findings.

Grading arithmetic: 3 Grade A, 8 Grade B on first assignment, 6 Grade C. Applying the promotion rule to the six C findings, four were access-driven and moved to B, leaving 2 genuine C items - one waiting on data capture at the next service and one that is an owner decision outside make-ready scope. Final tally 3 A, 12 B, 2 C, totalling 17.

One re-grade is worth recording because it happened in the walk and it is the error to watch for. Finding 1 was first logged as Grade B on the reasoning that the alarm still chirped when tested. It is Grade A: a life-safety device past its stated replacement date is named in the Grade A definition regardless of whether it responds to a test button. Reporting the walk as clean without naming that misgrade would misrepresent how the rule performed, and the same misgrade is the likeliest one on any turnover, because a device that beeps feels like a working device.

Time estimate attached to the record: 11.0 hours for the 3 A and 12 B items combined - 9.0 hours for the original A and B list, plus 2.0 hours for the four promoted items.

The promotion rule earns itself here. This shop's own timing on interior tasks shows the same work running roughly 30% faster in a vacant unit than in an occupied one, once notice, scheduling, working around belongings and the occasional failed access attempt are counted. Those four promoted items at 2.0 hours in the vacancy would run about 2.9 hours across occupied visits, and that ignores the additional trips, which is where the real difference sits.

Where this SOP is deliberately narrow

It does not decide deposit liability. The record states conditions and their physical cause where observable. Whether the outgoing tenant pays is a determination the manager makes against a lease you have not read, and a contractor's record that reads as an accusation will be waved in a dispute you would rather not attend.

It does not certify code compliance. A make-ready inspection is not a code inspection and must not be presented as one. Where you observe a condition that appears non-compliant, record the physical condition and note that a compliance determination is outside the inspection's scope. Certifying compliance you were not engaged to certify creates exposure out of proportion to the job.

It does not grade cosmetics. Paint, flooring wear, cabinet finish and similar items are the manager's judgment against their own rental standard. Recording them adds volume to a record whose value depends on every line being actionable, and it invites disagreement on the items where you have no standing.

It does not include pricing. Deliberately. See step 8.

References

• 29 CFR 1910.147, control of hazardous energy (general industry): lock, tag and verify isolation before servicing
• 29 CFR 1926.417, lockout and tagging of circuits, the construction counterpart
• NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code, which carries the smoke and carbon monoxide alarm provisions including device replacement intervals
• See related: How to Work a Turnover Window Without Blowing the Schedule
• See related: How to Quote Work a Manager Has to Take to an Owner