Boston City’s Property Inspection – Explained

Every single rental property in Boston needs to be registered, even if you do it short-term rental. The process can either be done in person through paper and check or online. At Green Ocean, we decided to do it online because of the number of properties that we have. It’s nice if you have multiple properties, you can just register one account and have everything set in one place.

Property Inspection in Boston City

The city of Boston will require you to have your property be inspected every 5 years. The inspection process is pretty detailed. They’re going to send you a letter in advance, telling you when the inspections are going to occur, and have your tenants fill out a form allowing the city inspector to enter into the building. If you don’t have this in advance, then the city inspector will not enter. The city inspector can come and ask tenants to sign the form in person, but we are responsible to let the tenants know in advance.

We, as a property management company, will go into the property before the inspection. We know exactly what will be inspected on the property, so we do our best to make these repairs to pass on the first try.

Inspection Process

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The inspection can be very time-consuming because inspectors are just going to give you a time frame, just like a delivery. It could be between 8:00-11:30, which means that you’d be sitting outside for three and a half hours. Hopefully, your tenants grant you access. If they don’t, you’re going to fail.

There are a lot of properties in the city of Boston, they might not be able to track it, but they do know when you purchased your property. If they catch you not registering your property, they will hit you with fines.

You need to ensure that you registered and have an inspection done once every 5 years. If you want to facilitate this entire process with a property manager, we handle everything from the beginning from the registration all the way to the compliance aspect to ensure that you pass.

What will happen when you fail?

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The city of Boston will give you one chance to pass before they ask you again to pay for re-inspection. You can re-inspect as many times as you want because the city is charging you a hefty amount. It’s really important to be able to pass during the first time. In addition, if you fail inspection during any type of eviction or court cases or issues, the tenants could potentially use this against you.

These city inspections are very detailed. For them, it affects the habitability and they just follow very quickly what it is on the sheet whether pass or fail. They’re also giving you 30 days to make these repairs. They won’t allow you to reschedule it even if you do it the next week. More problems can come up during that 30-day time frame which we’ve seen that happen as well.

If you or anyone else that you know is looking for a property manager to help you through the Boston city rental registration process, as well as inspections, feel free to reach out to us. Remember, with Green Ocean Property Management, you get more than a property manager, you get peace of mind.