Greater Lansing

Rental inspection prep

A city rental inspection is one of the few deadlines a landlord gets months of warning about. East Lansing runs a thirteen-month cycle and mails the reminder about four months ahead; Lansing works to the date on the certificate of compliance. The list that fails is knowable before the inspector writes it down.

What is actually wrong

A city rental inspection is not a surprise. Lansing works on a certificate of compliance cycle and East Lansing inspects every non-owner-occupied rental on a thirteen-month clock, with a renewal reminder going out about four months ahead. The date is knowable, which means the failures are preventable, and almost nobody prepares for it anyway.

East Lansing publishes its own pass rate: approximately 60 percent of rental property is found in compliance at the renewal inspection. The other four in ten get a correction list and at least one re-inspection — and in a city whose housing department runs on full cost recovery, every one of those inspections carries a fee. The cost of failing is not the repair. It is the repair plus the re-inspection plus the weeks between them.

The items that fail are rarely dramatic. They are a smoke detector missing from a basement that has stairs, a sash lock absent from a ground-floor window, a handrail that moves when you lean on it, an extension cord running through a doorway, storage stacked against the furnace, peeling paint on a porch ceiling. None of it is a project. All of it is a line on a report.

Where this stops

When it is not a handyman job

This is at the top of the page rather than the bottom because getting it wrong costs you a wasted visit. Insured, and no contractor license is claimed or implied — the Michigan residential builder license is not held.

No inspection certificate is issued here and none is implied. The city inspector decides whether a unit passes; this work changes what they find, not what they rule.
Hardwired or interconnected detector circuits, bonding across the water meter, new circuits, panels and service upgrades are licensed electrical work, referred out and named on the quote.
Water heater replacement and anything beyond repair scope on supply and drainage goes to a licensed plumber.
No structural alteration, and no egress window cut into a foundation — the Michigan residential builder license is not held.
A hazard gets reported, never concealed. Nothing here is about making a line disappear while the thing behind it stays.

The work itself

What actually gets done

A pre-inspection walk of the unit against the same property maintenance code the inspector uses, written up item by item in the order the inspection runs.

Smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors: every sleeping room, the hallway serving them, one per level, the basement, and the attic where stairs reach it.

Handrails, guards, steps, porches, decks and landings refastened and made sound.

Windows: sash locks, hardware that holds a window open, cracked glazing, and keeping egress windows and their wells clear.

Egress doors that open from the inside without a key, and a clear path of travel out of the building.

Extension cords taken out of service as permanent wiring, and clearance restored around the furnace and water heater.

Peeling and flaking paint inside and out, damaged interior surfaces, and exterior walls and trim made weather tight.

Screens in place for the season the code requires them, insect and rodent entry points closed, rubbish cleared.

A written record of what was found and what was closed, photographed, so you hold a document before the inspector writes one.

This work sits inside General Repairs, which carries the invoiced price bands for the trade with the sample size printed beside every figure.

Before you call anybody

Doing it yourself, and when that stops being the right call

Reasons to handle it in-house

A large part of a typical correction list is batteries, latches, screws and moving things away from a furnace. A landlord with a ladder and an afternoon can close those, and there is no good argument for paying somebody else to.
The codes are published. East Lansing puts its rental inspection guidelines online with the section numbers and the distances written into them, and Lansing code compliance will talk you through what they look for.
You know the property. You already know which porch rail has been loose for two years, which is knowledge no walk-through buys.
Doing your own walk is the only way you find out how big the list is while there is still time to decide who does what.

Reasons to bring somebody in

The exterior and the trades boundary are where self-prep usually stops. Paint, trim, grading, steps and anything electrical are the items that carry a re-inspection, and they are also the ones easiest to look at and call fine.
A unit prepped the week before the inspection is a different job from a unit prepped the week after it failed. Nobody is bidding against a deadline, and the work gets sequenced rather than crammed.
A portfolio changes the arithmetic entirely. One unit is an afternoon; eight units with the same four faults is a week you do not have, and the faults repeat in a way that is quick to work through in one pass.
The licensed-trade line gets drawn before the inspector draws it. An item corrected by the wrong trade still fails, and finding that out at the re-inspection costs another fee and another cycle.

What it costs

There is no price list for this, and here is what actually decides the number.

The same three words describe a twenty-minute job and a two-day one. Rather than publish a figure that is wrong for one of them, here is what moves it — so you can work out roughly which end of it you are at before anybody comes out.

How many units, and how much of the list repeats across them. Twelve identical apartments are not twelve times one apartment.

Whether we are walking it cold or working from a previous correction letter, which already names what this inspector cares about at this address.

The age and condition of the exterior, which is where the open-ended items live — paint, trim, steps, grading and drainage.

Whether the units are occupied, how access is arranged, and how much notice tenants need.

How much of the list turns out to need a licensed trade, which is priced separately and never absorbed into a repair line.

How to get a real number

Somebody comes out, looks at it properly, and you get a fixed price in writing with the work set out line by line and the exclusions written down as plainly as the inclusions. Coming out to do that is not charged for, and neither is working out what is wrong. If something is found once a wall or a floor is open, it is priced as a written change order and you decide before the work carries on rather than after it is billed. Materials are supplied at cost with the receipt attached, first-time customers get 10% off labor, and labor carries a one-year craftsmanship warranty.

If this is happening right now

What to do in the next five minutes, and what happens when you ring.

Before anybody arrives

Find the renewal notice and read the date off it. East Lansing mails one roughly 120 days ahead; Lansing works to the expiry on the certificate of compliance. That date decides everything else.
Dig out the last correction letter if there was one. The same items fail twice more often than not, and the previous report is the cheapest scope document in existence.
Walk the unit with a phone and photograph every smoke detector, every handrail, the furnace surround and each window that opens. Most of the list is answerable from those pictures without anybody driving out.
Check the simple ones yourself tonight: detectors beep, windows latch, egress doors open without a key, nothing is stacked against the furnace. That is a real share of a typical fail list and it costs nothing.

Call the business line

(517) 505-7135

Answered Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 18:00. There is no out-of-hours line and this page is not going to invent one — outside those hours, leave a message with the address and what is happening, and it is picked up in the morning.

On the call you get asked what is happening, what else in the building is affected, and whether it is still getting worse. That is how it gets decided whether this is our job at all — and if it is not, you get told that on the phone rather than after somebody has driven out.

No trip charge
No call-out fee or minimum
No diagnostic fee
No charge for a return visit

True across all 84 written quotes this company has issued. Most contractors in this market charge to turn up.

Or send the details

When the right answer is not this company

You can smell gas: Leave the building and call the utility from outside. Not us, and not later.
Water you cannot stop: Your main shut-off first, then a licensed plumber. Every minute of this one costs money.
Sewage backing up, or several fixtures at once: A licensed plumber with a camera. That is the shared line, not a fixture, and a cable down one sink will not touch it.
Sparking, scorching or a burning smell at an outlet or a panel: Breaker off, and a licensed electrician. Electrical work here is repair and like-for-like replacement, and this is neither.
No heat, or heating and cooling equipment that has failed: A licensed mechanical contractor. That trade is not offered here at all, and knowing that in one phone call is worth more than a visit.

Questions people actually ask

How often does a rental get inspected in Lansing and East Lansing?

They run on different clocks. East Lansing inspects every non-owner-occupied rental on a thirteen-month cycle and sends a renewal reminder around 120 days beforehand. Lansing works on a certificate of compliance, with the interval set by the size of the building and whether violations were found last time — the city publishes a maximum of three years for one and two-unit dwellings and for larger buildings with a clean last inspection, and two years for larger buildings or rooming houses that had violations. Read the date off your own notice rather than off a rule of thumb.

Can you guarantee the unit will pass?

No, and anybody who says otherwise is selling something they do not control. The inspector decides. What prep does is remove the items that commonly fail before they are written down, and give you a photographed record of what was closed. East Lansing itself reports around 60 percent of rentals in compliance at renewal, so the four-in-ten outcome is normal and worth preparing against rather than hoping past.

What is the difference between this and inspection corrections?

Timing, and it changes the whole job. Prep happens before the inspector visits and the scope is whatever we find. Corrections happen after, and the scope is already written for us on the city letter with code references and a re-inspection date. If you already hold a correction list, the corrections page is the one you want.

Do you work on occupied units?

Yes, and most of this work is occupied. Tell us how access is arranged and what notice the tenants need, because that drives the sequencing more than the repairs do. The walk-through is a short visit; the corrections afterwards are what need scheduling around people.

Send the renewal notice

Send the renewal notice or the certificate expiry date, say how many units are involved, and attach the last correction letter if there was one — the same items fail twice more often than not. We walk the unit against the same property maintenance code the inspector uses, write up what would have failed, and close it. Anything that turns out to be licensed electrical or plumbing work is named and referred rather than absorbed, because an item corrected by the wrong trade still fails. Coming out is free and there is no trip charge.

Get a Free Quote Call (517) 505-7135