Buyer inspections in an occupied apartment building

Can a buyer's inspectors go into occupied units?

Yes, on the written notice any entry needs. Civil Code section 1954 lets a landlord enter a unit to show it to prospective or actual purchasers, mortgage lenders, workers and contractors, and that list takes in the buyer's building inspector, its pest inspector, the lender's appraiser and any contractor who comes to bid on a repair.

The notice rules are the ones for showing an occupied building. Each notice gives the date, the approximate time and the purpose, and each visit falls in normal business hours. Put the inspection itself in the purpose line, since a showing and a pest inspection are different visits from the tenant's side of the door. Use written notice for inspections even where the statute's phone shortcut would cover a showing, because that shortcut is written for showing the unit to purchasers.

Schedule the inspections in batches

A buyer's inspection period can put a building inspector, a pest inspector, a roofer, a plumber with a sewer camera and an appraiser on the property in the same two weeks. Let each of them into each unit on a separate day and one tenant hosts five entries. The City's Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance counts excessive requests for entry without a reasonable justification as abuse of the right of access, and it says the same of a time window that is missing or unreasonably long.

So run the inspections as one schedule:

1. Ask the buyer for every inspector and contractor it plans to send, and which units each one needs to see.
2. Give each unit one window and put every visitor for that unit inside it.
3. Keep each window to an hour or two, and name the hour in the notice.
4. Send each tenant a written notice for that window, naming the inspection and the trades coming.
5. Ask each tenant whether they want to be home, and set the window around them if they do.
6. Have your agent or manager at every entry, holding the list of who is due and why.
7. Tell the tenant at once if a visit is cancelled or moved.

Common areas, the roof, the meters and any vacant unit can be inspected without going into anyone's home, so point the inspectors there first and keep the occupied units for the one window each.

What an inspector may do inside a tenant's home

The notice sets the scope of the visit. An entry is lawful for the purpose it states, and the City's ordinance lists entering or photographing parts of a unit beyond the scope of a lawful entry as abuse of access, along with misrepresenting the reason for an entry. Brief each inspector on what the notice says before anyone knocks.

Within that scope, keep to lines like these:

• Photograph the conditions being inspected, such as a stained ceiling or a corroded shutoff valve, and say in the notice that photos of the unit's condition will be taken.
• Keep the tenant's belongings, papers and family photos out of the frame.
• Open what the inspection needs, like the cabinet under a sink or an electrical panel, and leave drawers, closets and personal things alone.
• Agree in writing before anything invasive, such as opening a wall or lifting flooring, and tell the tenant in the notice if it will happen.
• Keep the visit to the inspection it was noticed for. Measuring for a remodel on a pest inspection visit is a different purpose.

If a tenant refuses a properly noticed inspection, write down what happened, leave that unit for later, and talk to your attorney before you answer the tenant. The rest of the building can still be inspected while you work out the one door.

The termite report, and who gets it

Under Business and Professions Code section 8516, a pest control company that inspects for wood-destroying pests and organisms prepares a written report on a form the Structural Pest Control Board approves. The company delivers it within 10 business days from the start of the inspection, to the person who asked for it and to the property owner or the owner's designated agent, and it delivers it before any work starts on the property.

So when the buyer orders the inspection, the report comes to you as well. Read it the week it arrives, unit by unit. The buyer's repair requests will quote it, and the occupied units are where any work it calls for will need notices, scheduling and a tenant's cooperation.

Fumigation with tenants in the building

If the report leads to a fumigation, the company doing it has notice duties of its own. Business and Professions Code section 8538 requires a registered structural pest control company to give the owner, or the owner's agent, and the tenant a clear written notice in everyday words, carrying the statements and information the section lists. Fumigation is Branch 1 work, and for it the notice goes out at least 48 hours before the application, unless the fumigation follows the inspection by less than 48 hours. The ways of giving it include first-class mail, email where an address has been given, and posting in a conspicuous place on the property.

The company's notice is about the pesticide. Yours is about the tenants' homes. A building under a fumigation tent has to be empty while the treatment runs, so fix the dates with every household, give your own section 1954 notice for any entry to prepare units, and agree in writing how keys, food, medicine and pets will be handled. Who pays for the tenants' nights away is a legal question to take to a landlord-tenant attorney before you agree to a date, since the answer can turn on the leases and on local rules. Shaya is an agent, not a lawyer, and leaves that answer to counsel.

Repair requests after the inspections

The reports go to the buyer, and the buyer comes back with a list. The purchase contract decides what happens next. It says how long the buyer has to inspect and ask, and what the buyer can do if you say no. You can agree to a repair, offer a credit or a lower price instead, or decline.

In an occupied building, weigh each repair by what it asks of the tenants. Every repair is another round of entries with its own written notice, and a repair that would keep a tenant out of the unit for a while raises questions the purchase contract does not answer. A credit moves the work to the buyer, who will do it after closing as the landlord, on its own notices.

If you agree to repairs, name the units and the work, set dates you can give notice for, and get the tenant's schedule before you promise a finish date. Keep every notice and entry record with the reports.