Property Inspections: What Every Landlord Needs to Check

As most landlords should be aware, new rules came into force on 1 May 2026 under the Renters Rights Act.

These are accompanied by increased powers for Local Authorities to enforce those rules.

As the fines range from £3,000 to £40,000 (for the more serious issues), it is important that landlords are compliant.

One of the best ways to ensure compliance with the rules during the tenancy is to conduct regular inspection visits.  But these tend to be unpopular both with landlords and with tenants:

• Landlords feel embarrassed about checking and ‘poking around’ in someone else’s home, and
• Tenants often resent the imposition and interference

However, it is really important that this is done.

Three reasons why landlords need to carry out inspection visits:

1 Unauthorised occupiers

Your tenants could have allowed unauthorised people (such as a lodger) to live in the property with them.

• If this brings the number of occupiers up to three or more, this will turn your property into an HMO (and subject to the HMO Management Regulations).
• If it brings the number of occupiers up to five, this will (in England) make it a licensable HMO.

In the last case, failure to have the proper license will make you vulnerable to substantial fines for non-compliance, plus you could be subject to a Rent Repayment Order claim. The Renters Rights Act has increased the maximum penalty for this to up to 24 months of rent.

There is also the fact that if your property is leasehold, if your tenant is subletting (e.g., via Airbnb), this could be in breach of your lease, which could make you vulnerable to forfeiture and loss of your property.

2 Illegal conduct

It is quite common for landlords who have failed to inspect their properties for several years to find, to their horror, that they have been converted into a cannabis farm.

The conversion process can cause massive damage to a property, which can be very expensive to put right. If you have failed to carry out regular inspections, your insurers may refuse to cover the claim.

Then, even if the entire property is not converted, tenants will often grow a few cannabis plants to make a bit of extra income. Turning a ‘blind eye’ to this can sometimes make you liable for prosecution along with the tenants!

Other illegal conduct can include

• Using the property for criminal purposes, such as a brothel using trafficked people,
• Criminal call centres or
• Places for creating counterfeit goods.
• Or your tenants may be hotwiring the electrical system to save money, which can be very dangerous.

3 Checking the property condition

Landlords have a legal duty, not only to let a property in a fit and proper condition but to ensure that it remains so. A property inspection is the only real way to check this. For example:

• You need to pick up on any repair issues and problems, and make sure they are sorted before they get worse and more expensive to deal with
• You need to make sure that the tenants are not damaging any of the equipment in the property by using it incorrectly
• You need to make sure the tenants have not changed the locks
• You need to make sure that there are no unauthorised pets (some pets can be very destructive)

Tenants often won’t let you know about issues at the property, fearing they will have to pay for repairs they cannot afford.

Note that when the Decent Homes rules in the Renters Rights Act 2025 come into force (currently expected later this decade or in the early 2030s), landlords can be fined immediately if Local Authority Officers find that your property does not meet the standards.

How often should landlords or their agents inspect?

My recommendation is to do the initial inspection one month after they have moved in, and then do quartely inspections until you are sure that they have settled in and are looking after things properly.  After that you can reduce the inspections to once every four to six months.

However, if tenants are long-standing and reliable, you can sometimes reduce inspections to once every six to nine months (but no less than this), whereas many HMO landlords inspect their properties weekly.

How to do an inspection

What often puts landlords off doing inspections is that they are not really sure what they are supposed to be doing.

Preparation is key here. So before you do your inspection, you need to:

Give written notice to your tenants.

This must be at least 24 hours’ notice, but ideally you should give them much longer than this. A good idea is to set a date for the next inspection at the end of each inspection visit and then confirm this in writing.

Do a list of things to check

It’s best to have a list on a clipboard so you can tick them off as you deal with them. Start with the records of your last inspection visit – were there any issues that need to be reviewed?

Then things which can go on your list could include:

• Checking that fire escapes are not being blocked, and
• Checking tenants have not disabled fire alarms or closures on fire doors
• Checking kitchen appliances are clean and being maintained properly
• Do bathroom sealants need attention?
• Is there any evidence of damp and mould at the property?
• Are tenants charging e-bike batteries in the property (this can be very dangerous)?
• Have tenants done any unauthorised works?

You should also

• Test the fire and smoke alarms
• Take meter readings
• Use a plug-in circuit checker to ensure that the electrical circuits are sound
• Carry out basic tests for legionella

On the day

Make sure you have checked everything on your list. You should keep a written record, which can be just ticks alongside your list with brief notes.

Ideally, get tenants to sign your list before you go, just to confirm that they agree with your findings.

You should also take photographs, particularly if there is anything in disrepair (avoiding, so far as possible, tenants’ personal items and anything that could breach data protection requirements).

After the inspection visit

You should spend a bit of time putting your records in order and ideally saving them to a computer folder named with the address of the property and the date of the inspection.

It is also a good idea to write to the tenants confirming anything that was agreed and the date of your next inspection visit.

And finally

If you have not done many property inspections in the past, I hope that this article will spur you on to do them more frequently in future.

If your tenants ask you why you are suddenly doing this, you can tell them it is due to the new rules introduced by the Renters Rights Act.

If you want more detailed guidance on how to carry out a property inspection, I have a Property Inspection Kit which can be purchased here. Although it is free to use for all of my Landlord Law members.