The routine inspection notice WA law requires is written, and it has to be given between seven and fourteen days before the inspection. There is also a limit on how often you can inspect: no more than four routine inspections in any twelve month period. Those two rules are short and easy to follow. What separates a useful inspection from a box ticking exercise is what happens after the visit, not before it.
How often can a property be inspected?
Four routine inspections in twelve months is the maximum. In practice most well run portfolios sit at three, or at four in the first year of a new tenancy and three after that.
Inspecting less often than twice a year is where owners get caught. Twelve months is long enough for a small leak to become a rotten floor and for a tenancy to drift without anyone noticing.
How much notice does a tenant get?
Written notice, no less than seven days and no more than fourteen days before the inspection.
That window is narrower than people assume in both directions. A notice given three weeks out is not a valid notice any more than one given the day before. If an inspection is being scheduled for the first week of March, the notice needs to be served in the back half of February and not in January.
What a good inspection report actually contains
This is where the value is, and where most reports fall down. A page of ticked boxes tells an owner nothing and is worth nothing in a dispute.
A report worth reading has photographs of every room, dated, taken from the same angles each time so that a change is obvious when the reports are put side by side. It records the condition of the things that cost money, which means roof leaks, damp, taps and cisterns, the hot water system, the oven and cooktop, window and door seals, fencing and the state of the garden.
It separates what is the tenant’s responsibility from what is the owner’s, because that distinction is the whole point of the exercise and it gets blurred more often than not.
It flags what will need attention in the next twelve months rather than only what is broken today. A hot water system at fourteen years old is not a repair, it is a budget item, and an owner who is told in March has choices that an owner who is told in June when it fails does not.
And it comes with a recommendation, not just observations. Whether to action something now, watch it, or plan for it.
What inspections are not for
An inspection is not an opportunity to reopen the terms of the tenancy, and it is not a substitute for a maintenance system. If something was reported broken in January, the inspection in April is not when it gets dealt with.
It also is not a housekeeping audit. A tenant who lives differently from the way the owner would is not, on that basis, a problem tenant. What matters is damage, risk and breach, not tidiness.
Entry outside a routine inspection
Routine inspections are one kind of entry and they have their own rules. Repairs, emergencies, showing the property to prospective buyers or tenants and other reasons for entry each have their own requirements, and the four inspection limit does not cover them.
The mistake to avoid is treating a repair visit as an informal extra inspection. If the purpose is to look at the condition of the property, it is an inspection and it counts.
The short version
Four routine inspections a year at most. Written notice, between seven and fourteen days ahead. Photographs every time, from the same angles, and a report that tells the owner what to do rather than only what was seen.
Most of the cost in a rental property is not the repair. It is the repair that was not spotted for a year. Our residential property management service inspects on schedule and reports with photographs and a recommendation, so an owner is making decisions with twelve months of warning rather than a phone call on a Friday afternoon.
These rules come from the Residential Tenancies Act 1987 and the guidance published by Consumer Protection WA. This article is general information and not advice.
