What actually costs money getting a duplex through HQS the first time

Question

I've got a duplex under contract and a property manager telling me the housing authority inspection is "free and pretty easy." That doesn't square with a landlord I talked to who said his first inspection failed on three items and it took him five weeks to get back on the schedule.

I'm trying to build the number into my rehab budget instead of finding it later. Things I've seen mentioned: GFCI outlets near sinks, handrails, peeling paint if the building is old (mine's 1961), window locks, smoke detectors on every level. Is that the real list, and what do those items actually run? Also is there a fee to the housing authority for the inspection itself or is the manager right about that part.

Rena Guide · Accepted Answer

The inspection itself is normally performed by the housing authority at no charge to you. Your manager is right about that. The money goes to repairs and to the days the unit sits empty.

The items you listed are the usual suspects. Rough figures, and these swing a lot by market: battery smoke detectors run about $30 each and carbon monoxide detectors about $50, so a two-story duplex unit might be $150 in detectors. A GFCI outlet swap near a kitchen or bath sink is often $150 to $250 per location with an electrician. A stair handrail is commonly $200 to $400 installed. Window locks and sash repairs are small, $50 or so each, but they add up across a whole unit. A missing or non-working permanent heat source is the expensive one, because that's a furnace, not a fix.

On a 1961 building, paint matters. Housing built before 1978 falls under lead-based paint rules, and chipping or peeling surfaces will fail. Depending on the surface and the rule that applies, the repair may need someone trained in lead-safe work practices, which costs more than a painter. Those requirements have both federal and state layers, so ask the authority which standard they inspect to.

The cost your five-week landlord actually paid was vacancy. Scheduling the first inspection takes days to weeks, and a fail means a re-inspection on the same queue. Two rounds can put you six weeks out from a signed contract with no rent arriving. Fix everything on the first pass, even the items you think are borderline, because a second trip is the expensive item on this list.

samantha_ruiz · Answer

Ten units in and the repair costs have never been the problem. The queue is the problem. Every unit I turn, I now assume the inspection sits two to three weeks out and I schedule the make-ready to finish before I request it, not after. If you request the inspection and then find out the water heater has no seismic strap or the pressure relief line doesn't discharge properly, you've burned your slot.

bmoreno23 · Answer

Dumb clarification: does the tenant have to be moved in before the inspection, or does it happen on an empty unit?

tylerbrooks9 · Answer

@ember empty, in the normal case. The unit gets inspected, then the contract gets executed, then the tenant moves. Which is exactly why @keystone's point about the queue matters, the vacancy is entirely on you during that window.

@tally, the thing I'd add to your budget line is one visit from a handyman doing nothing but walking the unit with the inspection checklist in hand before you call it in. Two hours of labor to avoid a five-week fail is the cheapest thing in this thread.

raj_mehta14 · Answer

Practical one I couldn't find a clear answer on anywhere: once the contract is signed, how does the money actually arrive? Direct deposit on a set day of the month, or a paper check whenever they get to it? I ask because if it's a check I need to know what day it lands to underwrite the debt service.

diane_kowalski · Answer

Detached structures caught me off guard when I was reading the standards. The garage on a duplex I looked at had a rotted side door and a floor with a real trip hazard, and the inspector counts anything on the site that the tenant has access to. If your duplex has a shared basement or an outbuilding, walk that too, @tally, not just the two units.

nicole_adeyemi · Answer

Separate from the housing authority entirely: check whether your city or county requires a rental registration or a certificate of occupancy inspection for a two-unit building. Those rules are local and vary widely by state and even by municipality, and they're a different inspection from the housing quality one. I've seen people pass the housing authority and then discover they were never registered as a rental in the first place.

laurenkim53 · Answer

Rural angle since nobody's raised it. Small authorities sometimes have one inspector covering a whole county, and the queue there can be worse than in a city even though the volume is lower. Ask the authority directly how many days they're currently running from request to inspection and whether they do re-inspections on the same route or a separate trip. On a $70,000 duplex, six weeks vacant is a real chunk of the year's return.

renee_dubois · Answer

One thing I learned the hard way about stairwells in a two-unit: the handrail requirement got read against the shared interior stair, and a rail that stops short of the bottom tread reads as no rail at all. Cost me a rail I'd already paid for once.

What actually costs money getting a duplex through HQS the first time

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