The Dreaded Inspection.

As a tenant, your two biggest gripes will no doubt be maintenance issues not being addressed and inspections.

The former comes down to the Property Manager and the latter is unavoidable as it is part of the agreement of renting. So lets talk about some gripes of house inspections and then some tips on how to handle an inspection.

Gripes:
Unannounced - Although legally there is a requirement to provide tenants with notice, sometimes misguided Property Managers will show up unannounced, or won't show up at all. 

Timing - It is courteous to have an idea of what the tenants lives are like. It's not such a good idea to schedule a house inspection the day after giving birth or school going back from school holidays. 
Overzealous - A regular inspection should not be as thorough as an exit inspection. However, we have heard on occasion where the tenants have been reprimanded for dust on the door frames, and the inspector looking inside toilets and fridges.

Tips:
You are not expected to have a show home when the inspection is done. All the inspection is about is to see if there is any damage and you are keeping the property in a reasonable 'lived in' condition.

Of course whoever is doing the inspection will be aware of who is living in the house, so they should take that into account. If you have 3 kids under the age of 5, then your housekeeping will be a lot different to a professional couple without kids. (But they will look closely for drawings on the wall, stickers on the windows etc)

But to make the best impression, give it a good clean, tidy away the clutter, the lawn is mowed and make sure it smells nice (no stinky rubbish lying about).

Move out Inspection:
This is a bigger deal and you need to be very thorough with this one. I covered something similar earlier which may be helpful. In general you will need to clean the house to the level it was the day you moved in, for example make sure you clean the following:

Carpets professionally cleaned (unless otherwise stated)
Walls cleaned
Oven and Range hood  and dishwasher cleaned (inside and out)
Cupboards inside and out
Baseboards
Windows (inside and out)
Fix any nail holes in walls
Garden weeded and tidy

A regular house inspection is not supposed to be a judgement on your housekeeping skills. Everyone has a different definition of clean and tidy. But sometimes you can be made to feel judged. If you feel that your house keeping is being criticised then talk with your Property Manager beforehand, have a list at what they are looking for and go over it with them.

Have you had good or bad experiences with inspections?