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Landlords should know at least the basics about what in your house is up to code – and what needs to be brought up to code - before renting out your home.

Under the Radar Building Code Violations Explained

Though you’re a landlord and not a building inspector, it’s critical you know the basics about what in your house is up to code – and what needs to be brought up to code before renting it out.   

When you’re a landlord managing your own rental property, you often find yourself in a position where you’re forced to put your trust and faith in a contractor or tradesperson, and end up being let down. Say, for example, there’s an issue with the wiring in the house: unless you moonlight as an electrician, you probably don’t know if the person doing the work on your home is doing it right, or their work was up to code. 

Or maybe you did some work yourself, or the previous owner didn’t bring the house up to code, and it was missed in the inspection.

That’s part of the reason why there are so many building code violations in California — a combination of shoddy work, and landlords who don’t know enough to identify the work as being subpar. In some cities, in fact, over 45% of homes have violations, large and small.

That’s why we’re writing this blog, to bring to your attention some of the most commonly overlooked building code violations.

It’s important to keep in mind that these laws are set on a local level and vary from city to city and county to county. That’s why we encourage you to check with your local housing authority, to see if the violations identified in this piece are relevant to your rental property.

This is often the most common code violation in any given city or state. Usually the law is that every sleeping area needs to have its own smoke detector; sometimes an additional detector must be installed outside the sleeping areas as well. The placement of the detectors is also often legislated: typically smoke detectors need to be on or near the ceiling, while carbon monoxide detectors sometimes have to be placed closer to the floor. 

As stated above, it’s absolutely critical to know the local laws when installing a smoke detector or a carbon monoxide detector.  But you also have to take special care to ensure that the detectors you have in place are fully functional. We recommend testing them yourself every year, at which point it probably isn’t the worst idea to preemptively replace the battery. But it’s also important to remind your tenants every now and then to check those batteries on their own.

Especially with the recent relaxation on ADU laws, many homeowners in California are looking to further leverage their property by adding extra rentable spaces. It’s critical to remember, though, that every bedroom must have an escape window. Many municipalities go so far as to define the minimum proportions of these windows, to ensure an average-sized adult can crawl through them. Again, we strenuously recommend you consult with local authorities, but 20 inches wide by 24 inches is a good rule of thumb. 

Often there are additional provisions to ensure that bedroom windows provide an adequate amount of natural light and ventilation; the standards vary, however, making it critical (not to sound like a broken record) to consult with local experts

This is especially important to keep in mind if you’re contemplating converting your basement into a bedroom: you might have to perform some excavations to ensure the windows are adequately sized.

If the bathrooms in your home all have windows, you can skip this section. If not, you should be aware that, in many cities and counties across the country, you need to add a venting system that can help remove moisture from the air. Not only will this help reduce the potential for mold growth, but it will ensure that wood cabinets don’t warp and that paint doesn’t start to peel prematurely. 

It’s not only critical that you have a vent — the vent must direct the moist air it collects out of the house altogether. Vents that lead into an attic space might be easier to install, but depending on where you live, that could constitute a code violation, too.  And no matter where you live, venting moist air into a dark room that has little to no circulation is a sure-fire way to give your house a mold problem.

If you’re adding a ceiling light or fan or some other feature that requires electrical wiring, the connection between it and the preexisting wiring needs to be housed in a properly installed junction box.

“I have a great idea,” you might be thinking. “Instead of wiring it properly, I’ll just use a huge extension cord to plug it into a wall outlet or something.”  Think again — that too often constitutes a code violation. 

While we’re talking about electricity issues, we should mention that, in many places, it’s required that all the circuits in your circuit breaker box are clearly labeled and that no breakers are missing. This is a code violation that is often overlooked.

If your home is on the older side, it’s critical to check if there’s any asbestos or lead paint still present on the premises. Often found in insulation materials, asbestos needs to be removed by a licensed and insured expert who can handle and dispose of it safely and properly — not only to ensure their health and the health of occupants, but to guarantee it doesn’t end up in a landfill or dumpster.

With regard to lead paint, we all know the issues related to children, but it is dangerous for people of all ages. If your house was built before 1978, the chances are, according to the government, it has lead paint. To be certain, we suggest you hire a certified lead paint inspector. If it turns out there is lead paint, you will have to determine if the house needs to be stripped, or if the lead paint can be just sealed.

For more information about what you need to know about air quality as a landlord, check out this blog post.

Managing code violations in a rental property

If you’re thinking about investing in a rental property, or if you’ve recently inherited a house, it’s important to keep violations like these in mind. Whether you are planning to rent the house or sell it, the needs are the same.

Whether you’re self-managing a rental home or having your home loved by Belong, we make maintenance and repairs one less thing to think about. With an extensive vendor network of over 10,000 professional contractors, maintenance service subscriptions, great long-term residents and a 24/7 concierge service to help, you can get peace of mind that your home is well loved. 

Visit our homeowner's page to find out more about how our services are helping people to ditch property management in Seattle, Redmond, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Miami and many more.

When staging a property for the rental market, here are some tips that will help you attract people (and applicants) who will love your home as much as you do.

Enter, Staged Home

There are many, many challenges that come with self-managing a property: the first for everyone who takes the plunge is staging your home. Here are some tips that will help you attract residents who will love it as much as you do.

“Self-managing.” It sounds like such a harmless word. But there are many complex challenges of self-managing a rental property, many of which you won’t ever be able to anticipate until you are deep in.

The first challenge that presents itself, though, is easy to see coming: finding tenants to love your home as much as you do. 

That’s why staging your home is such a critical part of the process.  A beautifully staged home signals to potential tenants that your home is worthy of love.  After all, if the people trying to convince you to move in don’t care enough to make the house presentable, it’s not going to attract people who will in turn care for the house with extra love and attention.

There’s truth behind the famous saying that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. That’s why we’ve made this list of proven tips and techniques for self-managers who are staging their own homes.

A simple fix that any self-manager should undertake is making sure their home is as well-lit as possible. This applies to electric lighting, of course, making sure that none of the bulbs are flickering and that all of them are in working order. But it’s maybe even more important to make sure that there is as much natural light in the home as possible. Have the windows professionally cleaned, and make sure the curtains are pulled back as far as possible.  A well-lit home feels welcoming and accommodating and friendly: a dark home on the other hand feels foreboding and dingy.  Not only that, but a well-lit home is much easier to photograph.

Obvious, but you would be surprised how often it is ignored. 

Of course this applies to the floors, the kitchen, and the bathrooms, but also the less obvious places like closets – as well as the garage, attic, and basement.  We’re not saying you need to bring in Marie Kondo, but a messy environment actually creates mental stress, and makes the house less appealing

Also, remember the full sensory spectrum when cleaning up.  Just because it looks clean doesn’t mean it smells clean. Air it out, light a candle, bleach the toilet — just don’t let an objectionable odor be the difference between a lookie-loo and your next resident.

Last point here: clean also extends to the walls.  Take a look at your walls with fresh eyes, and ask yourself if they need a fresh coat of paint. It works wonders!

It’s important to make your home feel like a blank canvas onto which your next residents can project their own personalities and tastes. 

What a lot of people do is put some of their furniture in storage to remove clutter. It’s not uncommon to rent furniture for staging purposes, either. Make sure it is tasteful and universally appealing – call it the West Elm look. 

Think about the way a nice, urban hotel room’s decorated; the way it feels stylish, but not so stylish that you feel uncomfortable. 

Again, this seems obvious, but you would be amazed how often homes are shown that aren’t in fully-functioning condition. Windows and doors stick. Faucets leak. The garage door requires superhero strength to open. 

We suggest that you do a walk-through, putting yourself in the shoes of a potential renter.

House plants can have a powerful effect on your residents. This is especially true when you’re staging a house. A few houseplants can help make a home feel bright and alive, especially in combination with white walls and a flood of sunlight. If things are growing in the house, it communicates to potential residents that the house is capable of nurturing life.  It also signals that the homeowner is a caring individual, who is capable of nurturing life themselves.

Concentrate your plants in the entry areas where they create the powerful first impression we talked about earlier.

Curb appeal matters. There’s research that says it adds as much as 11% percent of value when you sell a house,  and the same thinking applies to renting.

Peeling paint sends a bad message; of course, it’s expensive to repaint a whole house, so if there is a need consider some “surgical painting” in areas that are the most visible. For example, a coat of high-gloss paint on the front door is a welcoming signal.

Make sure your lawn and outdoor spaces are well-maintained. If the seasons permit, create some dramatic container plantings at your front door and in the back terrace. Staging the outside of your house is as important as the inside.  

Remember when we were talking about first impressions before? The first time someone sees your home from the outside — that’s the first mental imprint they will have of your home.

If some of this seems daunting, well, that’s where we come in. Belong takes care of every step of the process when it comes to finding residents who will love your home. If your home needs some extra TLC, our extensive vendor network can help with anything from painting to carpentry to plumbing or even renovation.

Not only that, but once the house is ready to be shown, we take photographs and create 3D virtual tours of the property to show it off in all its new found glory. Then, when we find someone who loves it as much as you do, we draw up the lease and help them move in.  

Want to learn more about what Belong does for homeowners? Click here. 

Keeping your residents safe is one of the major responsibilities of a landlord. That includes making sure the air they breathe is as clean as possible.

What Every Property Manager Needs to Know About Indoor Air Quality

Keeping your residents safe is one of the major responsibilities of a landlord. That includes making sure the air they breathe is as clean as possible. 

There are very few things that apply to every human being on the planet, that you can make blanket statements about. One of them is that everyone wants to feel safe and secure at home. It’s one step up from basic, physiological functions on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and it's one of the reasons why Belong works so hard to ensure the residents on the platform can be confident in – and love - their homes just as much as the owners themselves do. 

Most of the things that threaten us in our homes are easily identifiable. If you see a pest, you know you have a pest problem; if there’s water weeping down the wall of the bathroom, you know you have a leaky pipe.  Some problems though are impossible to see. Which makes them even more insidious. 

Take indoor air pollution. Maybe you can see mold growing in a damp corner somewhere, but unless you call in an expert you can’t know if toxic amounts of it are being dispersed in the air. 

And there are other forms of pollution that are entirely invisible, that emanate from sources we have no control over. Radon, for example. A radioactive gas responsible for 21,000 lung cancer deaths a year in America, radon is naturally created by the degeneration of uranium in soil and rocks, radon can penetrate a house through its foundation and potentially inflict lethal damage to its residents.

Landlords and property managers need to be aware of the potential threats posed by these invisible invaders, not only for their own sake — because (depending on the state they live in) they might be liable for damages — but also because it is simply the right thing to do. 

There are at least four major indoor air pollutants that landlords should be aware of: mold, radon lead and formaldehyde. All can be quite dangerous. The good news is that there are ways to remediate them. 

Disclaimer: We strongly recommend discussing these issues with a lawyer versed in local, state, and federal laws that are relevant to these issues, and that you work with accredited experts should you need to take any steps to mitigate against contaminated air. 

Typically we think of mold as a bathroom problem, but the truth is that it can occur anywhere in your home: all it takes is a little bit of dampness and oxygen to turn your living room into a petri-dish that can endanger the health of your residents.

There is mold there can be seen, that’s easy to address. But some kinds of mold are invisible. As this reputable source says: “One of the most difficult concepts to grasp about mold contamination is that many times you cannot see it. Sometimes there is no visible growth on the walls or any sign that something is wrong.”

Visible or invisible, mold is actually a symptom of an underlying problem: if there’s so much moisture in your house that means there must be a leaky pipe somewhere in the walls, or a problem with your windows or walls or roof or sills that is letting in moisture from outside.

To remediate a mold problem you have to solve both these problems; you have to eliminate the mold itself, of course – individual states have their own certification process for mold remediators, but we also recommend consulting with the Institute of Inspection Cleaning and Restoration Certificatiom, a non-profit organization for the “inspection, cleaning and restoration industries.” But you also have to fix the underlying issue. So if the moisture giving rise to the mold is from leaky pipes, you need a plumber; if it’s coming through a poorly sealed window, you probably need a glazier.

In most states, there are laws that address those underlying issues: You have to ensure the home itself is weather-tight, as well as  provide adequate plumbing, ventilation, and non-porous, non-absorptive fixtures and surfaces in bathrooms and kitchens.

But oftentimes the laws themselves don’t even explicitly mention mold; California’s laws do so, but they’re the exception, rather than the rule.  

That’s why we encourage all homeowners to consult with the local housing authority, in order to gain absolute clarity as to what’s required of them. We also encourage homeowners to go above and beyond the base requirements. Because if mold becomes a persistent problem, your home being vacant is probably going to become a persistent problem, too. Besides, it’s hard to love something that smells like mildew and Limberg. 

Even though radon is potentially more hazardous and dangerous than mold, there is little legislation on a national or state level that requires landlords to take any steps to mitigate its presence in the house.

That doesn’t mean that residents have no recourse if they get sick from radon in a home you own; if your home is located in a place known to have a lot of radon problems and fail to test and/or warn tenants, they might have grounds for a lawsuit. Which can be a lengthy and expensive ordeal, even if they don’t win.

Again, we strongly advise that you consult with a lawyer regarding your potential legal exposure, should your tenants get sick from exposure to radon while living in your house. 

We recommend purchasing a radon detector, to see if your property has an issue, and also to monitor it, in case an issue develops. They are surprisingly affordable. Should your property have or develop a radon issue, there are ways to eliminate it: the foundation of the house should be checked for cracks through which the radon can pass, and specialized ventilation systems can also be helpful.  Given the complexity of the task your first step should be consulting with an expert.  Find a professional certified by the National Radon Safety Board, or contact your state’s official radon office. The expert will be able to identify the source of the radon and develop a plan to take care of the problem. 

The lead paint chips that you don’t want children or dogs eating under any circumstances can slough off particles in the air that are also quite dangerous.  If you own a home built after 1978, when the use of lead-based paints was banned in the US, you’re probably safe. If not, hire a house painter to strip the house and repaint it. 

In addition to these acute issues, there’s the air pollution caused by general filth. That’s why it’s important to change and clean air conditioner filters and make sure heating and cooling systems are in good repair; along those same lines you should vacuum any air ducts where dust and dirt might be accumulating. There are also new, technologically advanced air cleaners on the market like Molekule; Molekule units not only filter the air and give it a score based on its quality, but they also analyze the particles contained in it, to determine if there’s anything dangerous floating about. Air purifiers that use HEPA filters are also quite effective. 

Belong looks out for everyone within the residential network

Belong isn't a property management company, it's a residential network for homeowners and renters. Belong looks out for everyone on the platform — the homeowners, the residents, and the houses themselves. When you work with Belong, you have access to their extensive vendor network of over 10,000 professional contractors. They can take care of some of the underlying issues identified here, like leaky pipes or shoddy windows, or even stripping and repainting your house from top to bottom.

Belong is simplifying the rental experience across the US and helping more homeowners reach their financial goals with the most hassle-free property management service; Belong PRO.

Can you ban smoking in a rental home? While state legislation varies on smoking, there are things landlords can do to protect their property and air quality.

Can I Stop Tenants Smoking? What Landlords Need to Know About Tobacco

Though smoking is on the decline, it's still a topic important to landlords when renting out their home. While there are no federal laws around smoking in the home, there is varying legislation across the states. Find out what you need to know about renting to a smoker and what your rights are when managing your own rental property. 

If you’re self-managing your own property, you’re responsible for the health and welfare of the residents in your building, at least in part. Obviously, those responsibilities have their limits — you aren’t obligated to take your tenants in for their yearly check-ups — but when it comes to things like air quality, clean water, and functional radiators, you’re on the hook. 

Let’s pick up the air quality theme and talk about smoking — a touchy subject when it comes to property management. No one wants to impinge upon the rights of their tenants, but on the other hand, if the tenant is doing something that can potentially damage the property — or negatively affect the health of their neighbors — you might start to wonder if you should do something about it. And if so, what exactly can you do?  

Smoking laws for rentals vary on location

The answer to this question very much depends on where your rental property is located. There’s no federal law that limits an individual’s right to smoke cigarettes (or cigars or pipes for that matter) in their own home, even if they’re renting it. On the other hand, there are state and local laws that might provide some guidance to property owners. 

As is always the case when we discuss matters of law, we strongly advise that you consult with a local attorney before taking any action. But the bottom line is that you can prohibit smoking on your property if you want to. In California, for instance, property owners have the right to ban smoking on their property altogether. (For information on the laws in other states, this link is a good place to start.)     

It’s best to do this by inserting a no-smoking clause into the original lease; there are free online templates to help you do just that. But you can also turn your place into a no-smoking building in the middle of your resident’s lease. 

If you DO convert your home into a smoke-free property mid-lease, residents can continue to smoke until it’s time to renew.  Also according to Californian law, you have to delineate your rules on smoking in the lease itself — so if the smoker does choose to renew, you have to make sure the language of the lease reflects the change in policy. 

Despite the fact that you will be providing your residents with the written rules, we also advise you to have an open conversation before anyone signs anything. Reinforce the legal language of the lease. Tell potential tenants if smoking is prohibited altogether on your property (including outdoor areas), or if it’s only prohibited in certain places (in shared spaces, like hallways and entryways, for example). Be as clear as possible. Not only is it helpful for them, but if there’s a problem down the line and you have to enforce the rule, you can feel confident that you fully explained your position. If it’s in the lease, then the conversation is only a friendly gesture.

What can a property owner do to enforce no-smoking rules? 

There are dramatic actions you can take. You can sue the resident, or even try to evict them. But really, considering the stress and legal fees these more dramatic steps might incur, your best option might be to use the resident’s security deposit to finance a deep clean at the end of the lease.

We recommend consulting with a local lawyer to find out exactly what your options are in such a circumstance. 

How does Belong protect rental homes from smoke damage?

Difficult situations like these, that can be both time-consuming and costly, are part of the reason why so many people choose not to self-manage their own property. When you work with Belong, you can rest assured that we’ll do everything we can to make sure situations like this don’t occur in the first place. We personally interview every resident, are super-careful when it comes to articulating your smoking policy when we draw up your lease. And if, despite our best efforts, the worst happens — we’ll enforce your rules to the maximum extent of the law.  

See why thousands of US homeowners are ditching outdated Property Management in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Tampa, Jacksonville, Concord, Berkeley, Orlando and more.

Lucas Hanft

Lucas attended Yale University before becoming a journalist and working with brands to tell their story.

Brett Jaffe

Dom Difurio

Afton Brazzoni

Adam Hanft

Belong

Brett Jaffe

Dom Difurio

Afton Brazzoni

Adam Hanft

Belong