What a routine inspection looks like when you can walk through it
A routine inspection you can walk through arrives as one email. It carries the written report with every room covered, a maintenance panel that says what we found (or that nothing needs doing) and, where the visit was shot on our 3D camera, a button that opens a 360 tour of your property as it stood that day. A person has read all of it before it reaches you. Here is what each part is for and what happens once a finding is in it.
If you'd like this on your own property, book a call with Thomas. If you'd rather start with the numbers, get your instant rental report first.
What is in the email you receive?
After the visit, the report is saved as a draft and your email is drafted with it. Nothing goes out until a person has checked the photos and the wording. A routine inspection is a record you may one day rely on, so it is treated as one.
The email runs in a set order: a short introduction, an inspection summary, a maintenance panel, the tour section where there is one, then a note about leaving us a review and the signature. The full report is attached as a PDF.
Three rules shape what is in that PDF. Every area of the property gets content, because a blank area reads as unchecked. Every finding keeps the severity the inspector recorded; the wording is tidied, never softened. Nothing is added that the inspector did not record. What you read is what was seen.
What does the 360 tour show?
When the inspection was attended and shot on the 3D camera, the report carries 360 views of each room. The tour is built from those views. It takes about three minutes to build and it lives at tour.thegalleryrealestate.com.au, our own address. It opens on any device without an app.
You move through the property room by room and look wherever you like: the ceiling corner above the shower, the seal on the balcony door, the inside of the laundry cupboard. It is the view you would get standing there, without the trip.
Each new routine tour for the property replaces the previous one at the same address, so the link you hold always shows the most recent visit. An entry condition tour keeps its own address and is never overwritten, which gives you a fixed starting point to compare against at the end of the tenancy.
Two things worth knowing. The tour is unlisted: search engines do not index it and the address is hard to guess, but it is not password protected, so treat the link as you would any document about your property. And not every inspection produces a tour. The written report is the record; the tour is there when the visit was shot in 360.
Who sees the report?
You do and so does the tenant. The same report, with the same findings and the same photos, is visible to both. That is deliberate. A tenant who can read the finding about the bathroom fan is a tenant who understands why someone is coming to look at it.
It also means the report is a dated record of condition that neither side can dispute later. When the tenancy ends, the entry report, each routine report and the final inspection sit in a line.
How often do we inspect?
For a new tenancy, the first routine inspection is three months after the tenant moves in. After that, every nine months. A tenancy we take over from another agent or from self-management gets its first routine booked within three months of the handover.
NSW law sets the ceiling: no more than four routine inspections in any twelve months, each with at least seven days' written notice. Entry is between 8:00am and 8:00pm, Saturdays included, not on a Sunday or public holiday unless the tenant agrees. We work inside those limits, not up to them.
One thing to check on your side. Most landlord insurance policies expect inspections at least six monthly. Read what yours expects and tell us if it differs from the schedule above.
What does the tenant see before the visit?
At least seven days before the date, the tenant receives a written notice with four facts: the date, the time, the property and who is coming. It is a notice under the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 once it is sent. The system drafts it. A person sends it.
The notice carries a Confirm button. Most tenants confirm with a tap rather than a phone call. They can tell us the time works. They can tell us they will not be home and we should use our keys. Or they can tell us the time does not suit, in which case their preferred days come back to us. "Does not suit" is a request to reschedule, not a refusal of entry. If we agree a new date, a new notice goes out, because a new date means a new notice.
Tenants are given a two-hour arrival window on the day. Anyone who has not confirmed two days out receives a reminder, which a person sends. Before the day, access is settled one of three ways: the tenant will be home; we use office keys; or neither applies and the visit is rescheduled.
What happens after a finding?
The maintenance panel in your email is the short answer. Where nothing needs doing, it says so. Where something does, each item is listed with the photo behind it, so you are looking at the problem rather than a description of it.
A finding that needs a trade becomes a maintenance job on the property. How far we go before calling you is set when you sign on: always check first; approve reasonable repairs up to an agreed limit; or action everything necessary. Above that limit we always call first.
When quotes come back, they do not arrive as a stack of numbers. They come with a recommendation: which quotes price the same piece of work, which one is narrower and which we would approve. You decide. There is more on how we read quotes in Three quotes is not a comparison.
Because the tour is dated, a finding is also easier to put in context. The question is rarely "is there a mark on the wall" and more often "was it there in February". The entry condition tour and the last routine tour answer that without anyone having to remember.
Can you come along?
Yes. If you would like to attend, we confirm the schedule with you and send a calendar invite. Many owners, especially those interstate or overseas, find the tour does the job and skip the trip. Either way the report is the same.
The thinking behind the tour and why we started shooting inspections in 360 is in our earlier post Routine inspections you can walk through. This post is the owner's side of it: what lands in your inbox and what happens next.
Want to see it on your property?
A call with Thomas covers how inspections, maintenance and reporting would run for your property, in about fifteen minutes.