Bedford Ohio rental inspections

[Gwen Fyfe]

I know there are a few people here who manage rentals in Bedford, right outside Cleveland.

I've been getting my inspections done, and boy are they nitpicky. It's important to me to keep properties in good condition for my tenants, and some of the repairs the city is asking for are reasonable. (Although many are minor cosmetic damage caused by tenants which I normally wouldn't do anything with until the tenants move. Meh.) But some of them are just nuts. I need to install a GFCI outlet on both sides of every sink (not replace a normal outlet with a GFCI one, put in entirely new outlets so every sink has two), install another 2-3 smoke detectors per property, repaint all internal molding/trim so that it matches, replace a garage door panel that has a 1 cm dent, and so on. Really?! 

I have more properties coming up to be inspected so I took a look at the city website. I noticed that on the request form, you can say that you do not consent to an inspection. If you do this, they'll either get a warrant (which seems like a lot of trouble and expense for them) or just do a general exterior inspection.

Has anyone done this? How does it play out? Because of some of the changes that are being requested by the city, I think that the previous owners of the properties must have not allowed internal inspections. But I don't want to get into an adversarial relationship with the city.