Home Maintenance & Turnover Lists in Durham, NC

Use the empty window

Durham has a lot of let housing — more than anywhere else we cover — and turnover maintenance is a large part of what we do here.

The most useful thing to understand about it is that an empty property is the cheapest it will ever be to work in.

No furniture to move. Wall repairs, painting, flooring and skirting work all take considerably longer around somebody belongings.

No scheduling around anybody. Work runs continuously rather than in the windows a tenant is available.

Everything is visible. Damage behind a wardrobe and marks behind a sofa are both findable, which they are not with the place occupied.

Noise and dust do not matter. Which changes what can be done in a day.

The window is usually short. Which is why the list wants to be complete before it opens rather than discovered during it.

The list, which is consistent

Across a great many turnovers, the same items:

Wall repairs. Anchor holes from televisions and shelving, doorstop punctures, corner bead damage, scuffs and marks. This is the biggest single item and it is the one that governs the schedule, because filling needs drying time between thin coats. A property with a lot of it is two visits rather than one long day.

Doors and hardware. Handles that have been forced, doors that have dropped and no longer latch, hinges pulled out of jambs, hollow-core doors split at the hinge side or failed at the lock block. Some of that is repairable and some is not, and we will say which rather than filling something that will fail again.

Sealant. Round baths, shower trays and worktops. The joint that fails most often, and the one that does damage over the following tenancy if it is left. Old sealant comes out completely rather than getting a fresh bead run over it.

Grout and tile. Cracked tiles, tired grout, and the corners that were grouted when they should have been sealed — those junctions move and rigid grout cracks there every time.

Fixtures. Dripping taps, running toilets, damaged light fittings, dead extract fans.

Blinds and window coverings. Almost always something broken.

Trim and skirting. Furniture damage at corners and along runs.

Alarms. Smoke and carbon monoxide — batteries, and the age of the units, since detectors have a service life shorter than most people assume.

The items that are easy to skip and worth doing

Three things are invisible on a viewing and cause real trouble over the next tenancy.

Bath and shower sealant. A failed joint lets water into the substrate for a year before anybody mentions it.

Extract fans. A bathroom that does not dry grows things in the grout and the sealant and eventually damages decoration. Worth checking that the fan runs, that the duct actually goes outside rather than into a roof space, and — the most effective change — fitting a timer or humidity-sensing switch so it runs after the shower stops rather than only while somebody is in the room.

Isolation valves. The small shut-offs under sinks and behind toilets. In an older property they have frequently never been turned, and when a tenant needs one during a leak, it will not close. Replacing them at turnover is cheap and it is exactly the sort of thing that turns a minor incident into a claim.

Older Durham properties

A great deal of Durham let housing is in the older neighbourhoods, and that adds items.

Plaster rather than drywall. Repairs need matching rather than patching — a rectangle of modern board in a hand-laid plaster wall is visible in raking light for the life of the room. And plaster fails at the keys behind it rather than in the material, so a loose area gets re-secured to the lath rather than cut out.

Original doors that have been painted a dozen times, where the build-up is dimensional and the fix is dealing with the paint rather than planing the door.

Trim profiles that are not sold, so damage gets built up from parts or milled to match rather than swapped for modern stock.

Pre-1978 paint, where intact paint is not the hazard but dust is — wet methods and containment rather than dry power sanding.

Beyond turnovers

The same arithmetic applies to any maintenance list: one small job costs the minimum, and the ninth item costs a fraction of that because the visit is already paid for.

Seasonal work twice a year — spring for caulk, exterior paint on the sun-facing elevations, decks and fences; autumn for weatherstripping, gutters, exterior faucets and alarms.

Holiday decorating, including booking the January takedown at the same time.

What we do not do

Anything requiring a permit, anything structural, roof work, and licensed electrical or plumbing work beyond fixture and valve replacement. On older properties that boundary comes up more often and you will hear it at the quote.

Getting a price

Send the list numbered with photographs and tell us the date the property has to be ready. We will tell you plainly whether the window is achievable rather than agreeing and running over.

Durham is about thirty-five minutes from us, with no travel surcharge.