Hi, my name is Tiea Vincent and I'm the broker and owner of Roundtable Property Management. Today we're gonna talk about disclosure and items that may not be included in your rental that you may have forgotten about. Much like a sales contract, the seller typically discloses to the buyer items that are no longer working or materially affect the property. Just like that, in rentals, we need to disclose to the tenants when advertising and showing the home items that are not working or are not going to be conveyed. These things can get the owners and a lot of trouble. You can see from the list that I'll go over that a lot of these items are very pricey, which might be the reason why you haven't fixed them to begin with, but you definitely don't want to be forced to fix them once the tenant moves in because they thought they were working.
One of the big items that's most common here in Florida are the sprinkler systems. If we're showing the home and there's a sprinkler system set up in the garage, the tenants going to assume that it is working. So when they move in and they find out, well, that sprinkler system hasn't worked in 10 years, we're going to be responsible for fixing it because they need to be able to water it. And they rented a home with a sprinkler system.
Other big items include the pool heater. If you have a pool and the pool heater is there and it's not working, we need to disclose that is not a heated pool as well as pool lights. If you've got fancy lights in there that glow and they're no longer working, we need to tell the tenants those are not included.
If you have a shed or an attic or a closet space where you're keeping personal belongings of yours in it locked up and you do not want the tenant to have access to those items, we need to disclose that that area of the property is off limits to the tenant and doesn't convey with the rental.
A couple of other items include ice makers or the water dispensers on the front of the fridges, speakers, central vacuum systems as well as Jetta Jacuzzi tubs. If you have one of those nice garden tubs in your bathroom with the jets no longer work, we need to disclose that to replace those jets and get them working. Oftentimes you're having to rip out tiles and things like that and it gets very pricey if we don't tell the tenant upfront that they're not included.
Just yesterday, I had a homeowner investor who purchased a property sight unseen. He chose not to do a home inspection. And now we have tenants who have moved in and it's getting a little chilly here in Florida. And they want to light a fire. They lit a fire yesterday in the fireplace and the homes are just filling with smoke. After inspection we found that someone had put an entire metal cap capping off the entire chimney where it could not be used. We and the homeowner who purchased the home as an investment have no idea why it's capped off or if it's even functional. So now we have to send a roofer and a chimney company to find out what needs to be done so that the tenants can use the fireplace that was promised to them in the rental.
So just remember, just like in sells, in rentals, disclose, disclose, disclose. And if you have any items in your home that you're thinking might need to be disclosed. Give me a call and we'll discuss it.
