Petrol costs
I have been following a post on a Facebook property management forum in relation to routine inspections given the cost of petrol and diesel at the moment and whether inspections should be cancelled/postponed whilst costs are high or should remote inspections be utilised so thought I would make some comment for our NPMI group. Whilst I am not suggesting what you should do in your business I do want to raise some concerns that you should consider prior to making these type of decisions. First I want to highlight a distinction between the situation now and the situation during COVID, during COVID government mandates prevented us from conducting on site inspections so we had no choice and landlords and insurance companies had to accept the law at the time, now there is no government mandate it is a commercial decision only if businesses choose not to conduct onsite inspections.
Now for the concerns, failure to conduct onsite inspections may create some risk issues for your business, first it may be a breach of your responsibilities under your managing authority, this would be a breach of contract with your property owner client. Second, if a landlord needs to make an insurance claim due to an issue that should have been detected at an inspection and the issue deteriorates and further damage occurs landlord's insurance companies may refuse the claim or pursue the agent for reimbursement due to mismanagement as the agent had not done what they are meant to do, that is an onsite inspection.
The above are just two examples of risk that agents could face if they fail to do onsite inspections when there is no government restriction preventing them from being done. As i said above I am not suggesting what you should do, rather I want you to be aware of the potential risks and liabilities that a decision to either postpone inspections or conduct remote inspections could create. Some insurance companies have denied claims due to agents continuing to conduct remote inspections after government lockdown manadates were lifted so this is not a guess at what may happen there is history of this happening already. So please before making these decisions consider the risk, then make your decisions based on your risk appetite.