Landlords are in a difficult position regarding their exposure to personal injury claims from tenants and legislation changes.
Which is why we have come up with three specialised reports depending on state legislation requirements and risk mitigation.
You could be held responsible
Claims can not only come from tenants but from visitors to a landlord’s property. You can be held responsible even if you do not actively manage or visit the property.
This is because you have a clear responsibility to ensure the tenant is provided with a safe property, free from issues that the tenant should have reasonably been known about, irrespective of whether they personally inspected the property.
Prevention is key
The procedures are quite simple, landlords need to be aware of the property condition and potential hazards. Property inspections are core to this, either identifying the risks that you must act upon or confirming that the property is safe.
PropertySafe provides a single, clear and actionable report on rental property safety hazards that addresses the needs of landlords.
Claims cost you
Significant time and cost go into preparing for and defending a claim. If you lose, the situation moves to a different level regarding the magnitude of the claim and your ability to meet that claim.
Personal injury claims have awarded whole of life damages approaching $30M in recent years. Most building insurance policies include wording that states that if a claim occurs due to something that you knew, or should have known, the claim can be reduced or rejected.
Landlords cannot solely rely on the Property Manager
The line of defence that ‘I was paying a professional property manager to look after the property, so it was their responsibility!’ is not usually upheld in court. All stakeholders need to proactively demonstrate that they did everything possible to remove risk.
Self-managing landlords are significantly more exposed. Unless they have specific experience in inspecting properties for safety issues, the probability that they will be included in a claim is much higher. In such a situation, any successful claim will be directly focused on them and not apportioned with an agency.
Do not risk your valuable asset or simply your time and money
Under existing legalisation, several groups inspect properties for specific isolated risks. With PropertySafe, our inspection covers 16 potential hazard groups, including the legislated requirements, which results in a single comprehensive report. Landlords already incur costs to ensure their risks are minimised in 1 or 2 areas, such as smoke alarms and pool fencing. For a minor additional cost you can have total peace of mind and have the property checked for another 14 or 15 hazard groups, ensuring you are fulfilling your duty to provide a save home for your tenants.
Arrange an inspection and report – prevention is key
The procedures are quite simple, landlords need to be aware of the property condition and potential hazards. Property inspections are core to this, either identifying the risks that you must act upon or confirming that the property is safe.
PropertySafe provides a single, clear and actionable report on rental property safety hazards that addresses the needs of landlords.