On this episode, Andy Wallace joins Bob to talk about an extremely important topic for anyone handling a rental property: the property management inspection. This inspection takes place before a tenant moves into a rental and prior to the tenant vacating a rental. Though the world has gone digital, many of these inspections are still occurring on paper, by hand. With the amount of documentation and photos needed to complete these inspections, you can imagine how hard it could be to keep this straight for one rental - let alone hundreds of rentals. Andy’s company, zInspector is a cloud-based application that allows customers to do the inspection process on a mobile device. Be sure to listen to hear how the app works, why it is a great solution to recording home inspections, and more tips from Andy!
Outline of This Episode
- [2:00] Andy’s background and what zInspector is all about
- [3:47] How people are doing home inspections today without zInspector
- [7:07] The classic home inspection vs. this type of home inspection
- [9:08] Best practices to use zInspector
- [13:05] Personal use vs. business use
- [15:27] The final output from zInspector
- [18:18] Recommended devices to use
- [20:41] 360 degree cameras
- [23:42] The importance of timestamping inspections
- [26:55] Other uses for zInspector
- [29:43] Andy’s closing thoughts
The “current” home inspection process compared to zInspector
Many property managers are still doing the entire home inspection process on paper and by hand. Andy says that some property managers may have tried to track things on Excel or an online form, but that most resort to a paper checklist that they can touch and see. zInspector does a great job of giving the property management inspection process a similar feel to that of a paper form. For instance, it gives the whole perspective of the process. It also has subtle advantages. As software, it allows for customizable forms, adds timestamps, organizes photos, and allows the property manager to view the rental over a period of time. It has the tools to make the inspection process faster, and more easily referenced in the future.
Best practices to use zInspector for a property management inspection
Andy shares several best practices for working in zInspector for a property management inspection:
- Create properties either on the application or on the website and build up the property
- Customize area details (for example: 1 smoke detector per room) and synch that with all of your properties
- Gear up for move-ins, pre-inspections, and move-outs in the application - keeping this data in the application allows you to have a picture over time of a specific rental
zInspector’s final output
Though zInspector stores data in the cloud, property managers are also able to export data to a final PDF report that is printable. This report contains information, as well as six photos per page. Each photo is time-stamped and GPS stamped. Not only are you able to print reports quickly, but zInspector helps you locate them in an instant. You are able to search your database of rentals on zInspector by property address, inspection type, keywords, or timestamps to find your report. Compared to having photos files on a hard drive to search for or paper copies of checklists, zInspector puts your inspection information literally at your fingertips.
The importance of timestamps in a property management inspection
zInspector is excellent for the day-to-day operation of a rental property, but it also provides insurance for the legal side of property management. zInspector automatically adds a timestamp to every photo taken or uploaded into its system. This not only gives insight into a property over time, but can be used as a great resource if ever in court.
Bob Preston: 01:06 Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Property Management Brainstorm Podcast. I'm Bob Preston, your host of the show, broadcasting from our studio at North County Property Group in Del Mar, California. Today on the show, we will be discussing an extremely important topic for anyone handling a rental property. And that is the home, I'm going to call it inspection process. It's more of a tenant walk through it move in or move out to document property condition. And that inspection, like I said, could be done in move in, move out. It could be done at a midpoint of the lease to check on a property condition. And I have with me today by telephone from Davis, California, Andy Wallace of a company called Z Inspector, which is a cloud-based APP for doing home inspections from a mobile device. Thank you for joining us Andy.
Andy Wallace: 01:52 Hey Bob. Thanks so much for having me here today.
Bob Preston: 01:55 I did a quick introduction there of your company. I'm sure he didn't do it justice. So why don't we start by you telling us briefly about yourself, your background, and what Z Inspector is all about.
Andy Wallace: 02:08 Sure. So, you know, I actually started in a property management in a college town and found myself in, in our team in three days we would be turning over a hundred homes. Um, and so everyone's, so we're in three days, we're taking 10 to 20,000 pictures and then we've got to return all those security deposits back in 21 days. And it was, we were fighting with all the, you know, things that many people are still fighting with is, uh, you know, pictures or were unsorted we couldn't find them. We had these different paper inspection reports and, and things weren’t being filled out properly. It was hard to get them back in the office or even scanned and attached to the file.
Bob Preston: 02:49 What not on paper, a paper, um, documentation that's stored in disparate places.
Andy Wallace: 03:00 Absolutely. And, and we had, you know, uh, people wouldn't take the photos and back them up and put them on the server or any of those things. And, and really that's where Z Inspector was born. And so, uh, we started about five years ago to kind of really solve that problem, but it's evolved a lot since then. So, it's really now, you know, a complete inspection solution is field management work and everything else associated. Um, so it's a big aspect of, of property management, all that field work and trying to get that and make that all available, searchable and accessible. Um, you know, at your home or office.
Bob Preston: 03:35 Document, document, document. I love it. So, okay. So historically over the years, they've been probably some very traditional before the digital age, maybe some traditional ways of capturing this information. You just rattle off some examples, but for the typical homeowner investor who may be, is a do it yourself landlord, how are they doing this today, how are they capturing this information? I mean, are there their sticky notes, notepads, excel spreadsheets? What, what are they doing from your, from your point of view?
Andy Wallace: 04:04 So the vast majority of customers that we get signing up are still doing a, some type of paper process. So they have some type of a paper checklists that they're printing out. Um, they, they may have tried to do even other things like, uh, you know, an excel document or um, maybe some online form or something like that. Um, but really there's just too many practical limitations when you're really trying to fill those out. So, most people now are still doing these types of inspections by paper. Okay. And so, so what we're trying to do is, you know, a little different because there are some other software out there that some, some things that at least appear similar when you first look at them. But what a big part of what we're trying to do is give you a feel and process that does certain things like when you're filling out a paper form, you know, one things that's nice about that is you, you've got this whole perspective right, on a whole sheet of paper so you can kind of see everything at once. And so we're trying to give that feeling even if you're filling it out on a small like cell phone type device and so with a little bit different, but then we're getting all the real subtle little advantages and now when you really put it in software and so like the, I think the, the most straight forward one that we really focus on right from the beginning. Like such an all the paper forms, like you have like a five bedroom template and you cross out temp, you know, bedrooms that don't apply and sometimes you end up with a six bedroom property and then you have to scribble it in and, and all those things are our mess or even more subtle features. Like I remember one of my agents, she, she, it was a six-bedroom property and it was just said bedroom one bedroom, two bedroom three. So four to six and there was a damage to the window and one of the bedrooms and the, the different tenants were disputing which bedroom it was. So, we had no way in the form of even just saying it was a better one through six, what did that really mean? Right. Well now to go back to the property and look again, which is inefficient, right? And then it's even not if it's not timestamped. So if you go look at it later, well then can you really even say it was damaged at that moment? Right, so it's kind of these subtle things like that that now software can really take care of for you automatically. Right? So, um, so now how it work, cause you know, you're taking a picture of this in a hallway, bedroom flooring. Then five years later, different mobile device, you take a picture of the hallway, bedroom flooring, you can get one report all side by side. We're going to grab the photos all down at that level and all match them up all automatically. And so, so we have these tools now that one, it'll make your process faster and then, you know, more important. If not, you know, just as important is that it'll make it, so it's much easily more easily referenced in the future.
Bob Preston: 07:04 Great. Okay. So let's talk about what is, you know, the context of what we're talking about here today. Um, I refer to it as a property inspection. That's what our forms say. If this is not what you would get from a professional property inspector who's licensed by the state of California, that you might use, for example, when you're purchasing a property. I mean, those guys crawl in addicts, they check to make sure that there's no freon leaking from your AC, right? I mean, these kinds of things. And that's what we're talking about here, right? I mean, can you kind of explain that?
Andy Wallace: 07:38 Yeah, and we definitely have some customers that are home inspectors and insurance people and so forth. But you're right, the classic kind of term for home inspection is not in the same category necessarily at what you're doing for a move in or move out. You're really are just looking at different things and certainly a home inspector is not really looking at those things either, you know, so, um, so they, you know, home inspector might say, Hey, there's a small hairline crack or something like that. Um, and they're gonna, you know, that could be a potential foundation problem or something like that.
Bob Preston: 08:10 While at the property that’s what those guys are looking for, which wouldn't it be tenant damage so.
Andy Wallace: 08:15 Exactly, exactly. You know, they, they're going to be things that you might use to renegotiate a contract or something like that. But yeah, you would never charge those things, that tenant anyway.
Bob Preston: 08:27 So what we're talking about is a property management walk-through, we call it an inspection to determine what the property condition is, when the tenant moves in and then again when they move out so we can detect any damages or any things at the house that might be because the tenant, the tenant may have damaged or happened during their tenancy.
Andy Wallace: 08:45 And that's definitely a big part of it. However, you know you want the same process to also be used to capture any maintenance items. So it was, there are things that you're just going to need to do over time. And so, you want, you want to use the same process for assessing it, whether it is tenant damage or um, really, you know, just assessing what repairs that need to be done or upgrades or those are all different things. So, you know, so that's also part of it.
Bob Preston: 09:16 Right. Okay. So full disclosure here, we've become at North County Property Group, a member or a customer and user of Z Inspector. Uh, we just got started. I know enough to be dangerous. So pretty much today I'm going to let you do all the talking. I'm going to ask, ask some questions with that in mind and that, so I kind of want to set that stage as well. Um, all right. So, I guess are there any, from your perspective, are there any best practices when you're using Z Inspector that you would recommend to our listeners?
Andy Wallace: 09:52 Yeah, so, um, there are a number of different things. We tried to set things up out of the box. So, for the most part you can create a property pretty easily on the website or mobile app and then have that available for inspection. One thing you are going to do, we do a little differently even to build up this property with a list of areas and then you're going to want to customize what we call the area details. So, um, in like the simplest example, if you need, let's say a smoke detector in your bedroom, you're going to one spot. You just say, Hey, whatever. I'm inspecting a bedroom, you just add in smoke detectors. So you just change that in one spot and then that's gonna sync an update all your properties and it's designed even change over time. So, I know a lot of states right now still don't require COD detectors in the hallway. So right now, you're, you just may have smoke detector in the hallway, but then as that law will most likely change, then you're going to, uh, put COD detectors in the hallway. We see a lot of people right now; a lot of states are starting to change the 10-year battery requirements. So they add that as a line item and then just it updates everything. And so it's designed that if you need to dynamically up things over time, you can, and it doesn't hurt your old property inspection results as well. So that's one thing you will need to, you know, just kind of take a look at. It's very easy to do, quickly modify it and then that's going to kind of sync across the board. So that's just kind of setting things up. Now there are, just want to step back kind of a little bit is that, you know, when you pull up our APP, we have what's called property management inspection mode and it's its own, um, you know, its own inspection mode, compare to some of the other ones we have and it's, you know, geared for move ins and move outs. You can certainly use it for annual inspections and things like that. And then we also have a little short inspection. It designed to be shorter, it's called pre inspection. And it's interesting. Different states, that term means different things. Some people take pre-inspection and they really call that, that's a, pre-inspection before a tenant moves in. How we define pre-inspection in the APP is really, um, a few weeks before a tenant moves out.
Bob Preston: 12:10 And that's a requirement, at least in California. It’s a right that you at least to give you days. I spent to be 14 days before. No, no sooner than 14 days before move in.
Andy Wallace: 12:15 Exactly. And, and, and I think, you know, it's, uh, and probably more specifically, I think the requirement is you actually just have to give your tenant the option. Right. But the reality in court, small claims court, a lot of judges now, the first thing they ask is, did you do a pre-inspection? And that's how they ask it. You know? So it is very important to do that. But what, what we believe it's useful even if it's not a requirement, your state, I think everyone should do one and it just helps with the turn process because they, at the end of the day, we always want to, you know, make your turnover process as quick as you can. And so the idea is you do that pre-inspection and it really serves two purposes. One, it can, you can kind of educate the tenant and if there's things that, that they could fix and, and so forth, you just, you know, communicate to that. Then I'm like, so simple example is you see a broken screen, well attendant can go get that rescreen for 10 to $15 but if you hire someone to go do it, it's going to charge. They're gonna charge $69-$90 really for the trip charge. So that little simple thing, it's actually a way to engage with your tenants and help them through the process. And then the other part of it is if you are going to be planning, you know, upgrades or improvements or painting or flooring or anything that may be, now you are doing that before the tenant moves out. And so you are kind of a step ahead. You basically already have your painter ready to go, you know, two, three weeks before the tenants even moved out. And that's really how you want to schedule things to a speed up that turnover process.
Bob Preston: 13:50 So in North County Property Group, we're a professional property management company. We manage hundreds of properties, but an individual do it yourself landlord could also use the inspector, right? In fact, I think kind of the single user account is free from what I remember.
Andy Wallace: 14:06 Absolutely. So we let people use our software for five units for free. And um, and just kind of keep in mind though, we put a pre-loaded with a few sample properties. So you have some sample data on there. Just delete those on the website. And then you can use it for five units for free. And the idea is whether, you know, if you got a home or uh, you know, maybe a vacation home or something like that, you could certainly, you know, do your inspections with that. Um, but then as you grow, it tends to be geared more towards, uh, businesses. And so that's, you know, most of our, you know, our paying customers are essentially business owners.
Bob Preston: 14:41 One of my property management mentors in this business is a guy that I speak to regularly and he once told me document and record the property condition today, like you're going to in court tomorrow. So, in other words, be thorough, be complete, um, methodical, whatever you need to do, capture it. And you know, I, I don't like the thought of going to court, but that aside, um, certainly we want to be fair, right? So there's a, there's a part of being methodical, methodical and complete and thorough that goes to fairness to the tenant and also the owner. So we're the sort of person in between the two that are doing this on behalf of the owner. And one of our fiduciary responsibilities to be fair to everybody. I think that's a fair way to say it. Yes.
Andy Wallace: 15:28 Absolutely. And you know, so I think the best way not to go to court like you're saying there is to have all the information ready. So you so and, and you just tend not to have to go. And, and I do also really believe what this process you want to be fair. And so sometimes you may, if you had a property and tenant was there for a few years or and so forth, if you don't have all that real documentation about what it was when they moved in and maybe even some documentation over time where you did some interim inspections and things like that, you really kind of start to lose sight of, you know, what it might've been a tenant damage or what was normal wear and tear and so forth. So, um, definitely you want to be fair, the tenant, um, in all aspects, you know, one that's what a judge expects, but it's really just more importantly how it is to approach business lets you know. So, you know, all rental properties really are a business and you think of it that way and you want to treat customers fairly.
Bob Preston: 16:29 Terrific. What would that final output look like? Okay. So, if I was going to show it to a tenant or show it to a judge and uh, try to communicate property condition before and after, what would the output look like that you would have?
Andy Wallace: 16:43 So there's a few different elements in Z Inspector, but by default you're going to get a pdf report in your email that is printable and that it's, so it's the idea is that at the end of the day, if I still want to, you can go, you can get a report and print it. There's only six pictures per page. So they're viewable as they are on that document. There are timestamped gps stamped right on the document. So if you print it, you've got the documentation that you need. And so, you've gotten this kind of standalone report. So that's kind of an important element of it. And so you might be looking at other software out there and they've got the little thumbnails and things like that. And then you have to click to open them and things like that. Be careful of anything like that cause you're going to want to report that you can clearly print if you need to, even though 99 times out of 100 you're not going to need to print it. And so, but then what we do also that's different is that you can go onto the website and then we have these searching tools. So we have customers that have hundreds of thousands or even millions of photos on their account. And the idea is they can quickly drill down in seconds to any photo that they needed. So they can search by inspection type by date, by um, property address by, you know, put in keywords like flooring or window or anything like that. And then the documentation that matches that particular search, we'll quickly come up. So, the idea is not only do you have this kind of printable report, but now you've got this cloud-based tool that you can really search through anything and, and, and find out what you need or time.
Bob Preston: 18:23 So if a tenant or maybe even the judge said, judge, said, hey, uh, thanks for the report, I can't quite make out the detail on this photo. Can you bring me, you know, higher res or can you send me a higher res Image? We could certainly do that. And you've got all the photos. And right now we are, when we get back from our inspections or before we started using your product anyway, and we would literally, you know, from our iPhone or the camera has to take the time to upload every single photo into our file server for that particular property file. I mean, very time consuming.
Andy Wallace: 18:52 It really is. And then there's a lot of subtleties with the software that made that important. Like you can control it. So, um, like for instance, uh, you can make it so it doesn't upload on mobile data. Um, you can, it'll, it'll, uh, you can control the settings. So if it's uploaded to the website, it will automatically purge them from your device to not, um, you know, to not bog down your devices and memory, things like that. So those are all the little subtleties that it's designed to let people use their personal devices, but it gets all that stuff off of it and onto the website in a report back in your email.
Bob Preston: 19:30 All right. So from a digital imaging standpoint or point of view, you, you sync with other digital devices for capturing those images. What's a, I guess, what devices do you recommend or are there any ones in particular that you think were better?
Andy Wallace: 19:45 So, you know, basically all android or iPhone iOS devices can, can work. Um, I think the, you know, there's pluses and minuses, that's really more of a, uh, you know, android, apple decision. Um, and I think from my own personal phone line.
Bob Preston: 20:02 So you take the photos right. I guess within the APP from your, from your phone, instead of taking used to a different camera.
Andy Wallace: 20:10 That's the primary method. Um, so, and, and you can, it really doesn't matter on what type of device that you use. Now there are a couple things to kind of keep in mind. Now, we also often get this question asked and the device we actually recommend, even though I use an android phone, I actually recommend an iPad mini and there's even talk about, you know, that they may away or something like that. But I find like an iPad mini four, it's a device that works really well. It's got a big battery, it's small enough you can, you know, a man can put it in their back pocket and a woman can easily put it in her purse. And so it's just easy to carry around and it lasts a long time. So, and it really, and you can get, um, you know, uh, for, you know, under $300. And so, it is a nice device to use. So, we really recommend that.
Bob Preston: 20:55 A little bigger and, and, um, easier to navigate I think. And, and, and a mini, I think, I believe that too.
Andy Wallace: 21:06 Now there are some little subtleties with it though. Like, for example, that the mini, um, at least on most generations, I don't think even the current ones, but they don't have a flash on the camera. So what should it can be, it can be problematic. And so, Z Inspector is actually designed, so you could actually be doing your main inspection mode and it will call property management inspection. So you're doing your condition codes and marking things as a new satisfactory and comments and do all that and then pull up your phone and what's called photo inspection mode and take additional pictures or videos or things like that from the APP. And the server will now automatically know to merge them, and all put that as part of one report. And, and that's a key thing, you know. So cause sometime even if your battery dies you just pull up your phone or tablet or vice versa. So we try and make that entire process just seamless. And the server just handles that for you.
Bob Preston: 21:58 We had a property inspection and walk through one time and the tenant had turned off the power. So we are, even though we were doing it in the daytime and we're about, you know, the lights didn't work and that was a tough one saying. Alright, so I've heard of these little 360-degree video cameras that spin around or I, you know, we just got one too to use with your software. Tell us about that and how those work with Z Inspector.
Andy Wallace: 22:21 You know, so it is a feature that we would gear more to our business customers, but it really is powerful. It gives you, basically you take these 360 cameras and they have these spherical lenses on both sides. So you basically put it in the middle of the room, you walk into the hallway so you're out of the picture. And then on the app you'll just hit like the master bedroom button and it captures the entire room in one click. And then we handle all the things in terms of um, you know, pulling that image off of that camera, putting it on the mobile device, uploading it to the website, embedding it in your report. And then what you're left with is a report that when you, and you'll see that kind of this 360 image, it's kind of like rolled out so it looks a little distorted on standard paper, but then when you click the link, you can literally spin all the way around, go all the way down on the floor, all the way up in the ceiling out so you can get a pretty detailed, absolutely. Yeah, you can zoom in, you can zoom out and it just gives you all of that perspective. You know, cause sometimes if you're, um, you know, a big thing, even when taking pictures, you know, someone will have a little hole in the wall and I'll just take a picture. And then when you look back at the picture, you can't tell, is that a, is that whole, you know, um, dime size, quarter size, you know, or is it a fist, you know, and so, um, so this, now you can use this to help you with all that perspective. And then your reports are all at any mixture you want of pictures, videos. You can also do video clips for the APP and then these 360 images and that's all now mixed together based on what was most appropriate for you at the time.
Bob Preston: 24:09 Even though you've got the video, it's still a good practice to capture some stills. For example, maybe a close up of if you notice some damage or notice something that you want to be able to refer to later, probably capture a up close picture of it as well.
Andy Wallace: 24:22 Absolutely. Because you know, if you definitely notice damage, you want to take a picture there as well. And that way you've got a firm reference, it's easily printable and you're already done. Um, you don't want to have to, the idea is when you are done with the inspection, you're essentially done. You don't want to have to go hunt for it later and figure that out. So, but the videos are useful, you know, so sometimes you might just get that also is another tool to give you a perspective.
Bob Preston: 24:50 I mean, heaven forbid is trashed. I, it gives a really good perspective of, okay, we're not talking about small damages here. We're talking about sort of a, you know, major malicious type of event. Absolutely. We bought the Ricoh Theta 4K and that's not a plug for that product, but it's very high res stuff. And so we're thrilled to start to use it. We've just kind of been goofing around with it at this point. So like I said, I know enough to be dangerous. Is there, okay, let's talk about another feature. Does the APP timestamp your inspection so that you have it documented, what day you were there, what time maybe who did the inspection exactly?
Andy Wallace: 25:27 Exactly, and that’s a big part of how we started from the beginning when we, you know, initially we were just taking pictures. Um, everything is timestamped, user stamp in gps stamp and that will all show up on reports. You can turn on or off if you need to make it like a cleaner looking report for certain reasons. But for the most part people are all going to have that on there. And it really gives insight into things. And so, you know, this is um, uh, a real example in court that, you know, I had to go to one time and one of the agents took a picture. You could see all the grime all over the refrigerator. Okay, and in the, in this photo the refrigerator clearly looks stainless and, but you could still see all the grim kind of just as dirty all over the front. And basically, in court the tenant’s primary, um, you know, thinking in court was they wanted all the photos thrown out because her refrigerator was actually black. And the issue was, is that when the agent took the picture, the flash came back from the black refrigerator and it looks stainless in the flash. And so it was very easy to tell the, the judge to look at the report with the timestamps, gps stamps, 10 seconds apart. There was a full, there was a picture showing the whole room and then showing the, the, the refrigerator was black. So the idea was we got that level of detail without doing any extra work. And that's what we're trying to do because you know, when you really get down into court, the kind of, some very subtle things can make the difference between winning and losing and so forth. So we're trying to capture as much information we can. So, you have that available.
Bob Preston: 27:27 So like you said, 99 times out of 100 you're, you don't ever go to court, but boy, if and when it happens, and it may be for our property owners out there and eventuality, man, it's nice to be prepared so you don't have a lot of back and forth and it can be to your, you can go in, in front of a judge confidently and flip them the Z Inspector report, right? I mean, that's kinda the beauty of the system.
Andy Wallace: 27:47 And that's a big part of it. And I, and I think you're right, for the most part, um, the, the, that is the kind of, I would say it's almost analogous to insurance, right? Just, you know, doing this work all the time to be, you know, protect yourself. For the most part it's you're going to use it more on a day to day basis or planning repairs or coordinating vendors for the repair work. Right. And, and so you can use this, this for all these other elements as well and more of the operations side, but then at the same time have that available if you ever needed it from the legal side.
Bob Preston: 28:25 Okay. Terrific. Are there other uses for Z Inspectors? So, right. For example, my Business Development Manager was kind of watching us the other day and he's like, oh my gosh, you know, I have to come back and tell the team with this property is like before you've even captured our listing photos, and I have to describe this from my memory or maybe he's taking some photos, you know, briefly when he's doing the signing of the property management agreement. I mean, do you hear people doing that? Like, just kind of plopping down the camera, opening up to the inspector and even before you move a tenant in and maybe taking some uh, you know, some notes, maybe it's that, um, pre-inspection APP, even our, is there a mood? Is there an onboarding section in the APP yet?
Andy Wallace: 29:01 You know, and there's actually a couple of different modes depending on how you know you want to operate, but one that it's, it's a very simple one really in practice, but it's ends up being incredibly powerful. It's just we just call it photo inspection. And so we make it very informal. You just have phones back then you pick the property, you picked the general we call activity, why, why you are there. So marketing or leasing or maybe post a notice on the door. And now you can just take pictures, videos or 360 images. And so just by getting in there in a few seconds, now that picture is all part of the account. And that's useful in a lot of different ways. One, it's all searchable, but let's say it can be anything from, hey you like the example you gave, you took marketing pictures or maybe you know, you happen to be walking through the property for a maintenance issue and you saw a picture of a dog bowl or something that it wasn't uh, on the lease. You know, now you've got a gps stamp timestamp photo of that dog bowl there and those little subtleties may come up if there is a bunch of pet damage on the carpet, you know that they said that never had a dog, but you had a picture of a dog bowl and it's still going to be dated on the report a few months earlier, but you can actually add it to that move out inspection and that that had happened when it did so. So, it's just like another example by capturing this data, it just makes it available later for when you need it.
Bob Preston: 30:38 Occasionally we'll have, I don't want to call it a dispute, but a conversation with an owner that when we turn the property back over to them, they'll say something along the lines of, hey, the house wasn't like this when I turned it over to you guys? So you're responsible to get this corrected. And we'd go back and look at the photos we've captured, we'll, we'll go, well, yeah, it was like this. And I think this would help us prepare for that too. You know, so what a property condition is like when we onboard the property even before a renter moves in, I think is a really important thing for property managers and specific specifically to, to capture,
Andy Wallace: 31:13 You know, it. Absolutely. And I've had, I have a great example of that. The, you know, uh, the owner was going to sell a property and was convinced that there was closet doors on the property and on, on one of the bedrooms was just convinced. And because of we had that documentation was pretty easy to prove that, you know, know who's actually their own child who took them off before we started managing it, you know? So, um, but it's like, so getting that level of information and just being ready for when you need that, you got this reference that you can go back.
Bob Preston: 31:37 Andy this has been a terrific conversation today. In the interest of time, we're going to wrap up here. Any closing comments or thoughts about Z Inspector or you know, what investors and homeowners should be looking at when they're doing their inspections?
Andy Wallace: 31:59 So we try and make the basics very easy and, but the idea is really to just go in and take pictures. And as simple as that sounds, we, we still will talk to people say, Oh, I don't want that level of documentation and things like that. And we really think the opposite. You, your mindset should be the opposite. Document it, if you see a problem, get it fixed. If you need to disclose something to share it with them or if you're managing property, disclose it to the owner. And we think really having good records, good documentation, full disclosure, that's the way to really kind of run a business, interact with your tenants, and I think just makes the whole process better. Overall.
Bob Preston: 32:44 Great advice and a well taken. If someone wanted to get in touch with you or the team at Z Inspector, how would they do that?
Andy Wallace: 32:49 That's just go to our website at zinspector.com you can go there; you can create an account for free without even a credit card. You can, you know, use the software for free. There's a ton of videos on there and how to get going if you're more of a property manager and in more of the business counts, all the pricing options are all there. And if you need anything else, just let us know.
Bob Preston: 33:13 Yeah, you do have a lot of great videos. I've done it. I've signed up, you know, and I'm not a, I'm pretty technical, but uh, I, when I started doing something like that, I want it to happen quickly when it's me and it was super easy, super-fast. And like I said, we're kind of just getting started, but I've seen Andy around a lot and I recommend these guys highly. So y'all out there, listen to this man and, and check out his product. Thank you Andy so much for taking time to join the show today. And that's going to conclude today's episode. If you liked it, what's you heard today. You like the podcast and you follow us very much. Appreciate it if you would pay it forward, review us on iTunes, on Google or whatever platform you happen to be listening. And I want to thank you all for joining the Property Management Brainstorm Podcast. Until next time, we'll be in the field working hard for our clients to maximize their property value and rental income and maintain top tenant relations. And we'll see you next time.
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