A vacation rental turnover inspection is the least glamorous thing we do and possibly the most valuable. Every time a guest checks out of one of our homes, someone walks through with a checklist and a camera before the next guest arrives. Not just the cleaner. An inspection. Here's what that means and why the distinction matters for your home and your revenue.
Cleaning versus inspecting
A cleaner's job is to make the home clean. An inspector's job is to make sure the home is right. Those overlap but they aren't the same. A cleaner will wipe down a bathroom without noticing the towel bar is loose. An inspector tests it. A cleaner makes the bed. An inspector flips the mattress pad to check for stains. In many management setups, the cleaner is expected to do both, on a tight clock, for a management fee. Things get missed.
What we check every turn
Our checklist is home-specific, but the bones are the same everywhere:
- Damage. Walls, floors, furniture, doors, screens. Photographed with a timestamp.
- Inventory. Remotes, kitchen basics, towels and linens counted, games and books, the good knives.
- Function. Every lock, the thermostat, WiFi, the hot tub's temperature and chemistry, the stove, the dishwasher, the smoke detectors.
- Safety. Fire extinguisher charged and in place, first aid kit stocked, deck rails solid, exterior lights working.
- Supplies. Coffee, dish soap, trash bags, toilet paper, paper towels, hot tub chemicals.
- Pet check. All our homes take dogs. We look for hair in the couch, scratches on doors, and anything in the yard.
- Exterior. Deck, hot tub cover, yard, gates. On the coast, salt corrosion. On Mt. Hood, snow load and downed branches.
Why the photos matter
Damage claims on Airbnb and Vrbo depend on timing and documentation. If you discover a broken chair three guests later, you can't prove who did it and you won't be reimbursed. If the inspector photographs it within hours of checkout, with the prior stay's photos for comparison, you have a case. We've recovered real money for owners this way and, just as often, confirmed that a scuff was already there and saved a guest an unfair charge.
Catching small before it becomes big
A dripping hot tub fitting is a five-dollar part. Unnoticed for a month, it's a low-water heater failure. A loose deck board is a screw. Unnoticed, it's a guest's twisted ankle and a one-star review. A sticky lockbox is a squirt of graphite. Unnoticed, it's a family locked out at 10pm in the rain calling you, or worse, not able to reach anyone. We wrote about the guest side of this in what guests complain about most, and almost every item on that list is something an inspection catches first.
What gets skipped when it's skipped
If you're working with a manager, ask a simple question: who walks the home after checkout, and is it the same person who cleaned it? If the answer is the cleaner alone, ask how long they're allotted per turn. A large home with a hot tub needs hours for a proper clean. Adding a real inspection on top is often what gets cut when the schedule is tight and the next guest arrives at four.
Ask also whether you can see the inspection reports. If they exist, you should be able to. If they don't exist, you've learned something.
How it protects the reviews
Guests don't review a home. They review the moment they walked in. A hair on the bathroom floor, a burned-out bulb, a remote that doesn't work: none of these are disasters, but each one lowers the number. Inspection is how a home stays at 4.9 instead of drifting to 4.6, and that rating gap changes what you can charge and how often you appear in search.
What it costs
Time, mostly. A thorough inspection adds thirty to sixty minutes to a turn. We build it into our 20% fee rather than charging separately, because a home that isn't inspected is a home we can't stand behind. The cleaning fee itself goes to the crew; details on that in Cleaning Fees: Who Pays and Why.
If you'd like to know what a proper turnover process would look like for your home, or you suspect yours isn't getting one, our earnings review includes an honest read on how the home is being cared for. The rest of what we cover is on the owners page.