Move-In & Move-Out Repairs, San Juan Island Rentals

Long-term rental housing on San Juan Island is tight in a way mainland landlords do not quite believe. A decent house rents fast, often before it is properly ready, and the window between one tenant handing back keys and the next one moving in is usually days rather than weeks. That compresses everything. You cannot wait two weeks for a contractor, you cannot get a specialty part over on the ferry on short notice, and you cannot show a half-repaired house to the one qualified applicant on the island this month.

So the practical answer is one person who arrives with the tools, works through the whole list in the order that matters, and hauls the leftovers away in the same visit. That is what a turnover visit is.

The list is remarkably consistent, year after year, house after house. Wall damage: anchor holes from shelves and TVs, door-handle punctures, a dozen picture hooks, scuffs down every hallway. Doors that no longer latch, because island humidity swings enough between a wet winter and a dry August that door and frame geometry genuinely moves, and a door that latched in February will bind in August. Interior door hardware worn or missing. Closet doors off their track. Blinds with broken slats or a dead cord, which is one of the most reliably damaged items in any rental. Window screens torn or missing entirely, sometimes stacked in the garage, sometimes gone. Cabinet doors sagging and drawers off their slides. Towel bars and closet rods pulled out of drywall because they were never in a stud. Loose or missing door stops. Weatherstripping and door sweeps flattened. Deck boards and railings on the exterior that a tenant reported once and nobody got to.

Then there is what got left behind, which on an island is a category of its own. Departing tenants leave furniture they cannot ship, a mattress, a grill, half-used paint, a garage of boxes, and yard debris in a pile behind the shed. Getting rid of it is genuinely inconvenient here: there is no landfill in the county, the transfer station is closed midweek, and it is priced by weight with separate per-item fees for appliances and mattresses. I handle it as part of the turnover, with disposal billed through at cost and the receipt attached, which also gives you a real number if it is coming out of a deposit. Details on the junk removal and dump runs page.

The documentation is the part landlords tell me they value most. Washington deposit rules turn on written condition, and a dispute over a security deposit is an argument about evidence. I photograph the property on arrival, before touching anything: every room, every damaged item, close in and wide. Then I photograph the repairs. You end up with a dated before-and-after set and a plain written list of what was damaged, what was repaired, what it cost, and what was normal wear rather than tenant damage. I will say which is which honestly, including when the answer is that the carpet was simply old.

The move-in side of the same visit is shorter but worth doing: confirm every door latches, every window opens and locks, every screen is in place, every blind works, smoke and CO alarm batteries changed and units confirmed sounding, hardware tight, and the exterior walked. A tenant who finds five small things wrong in week one becomes a tenant who calls about everything for a year. A tenant who finds nothing tends to leave you alone.

Two boundaries. Anything electrical or plumbing goes to the licensed trade — I hold a general contractor registration, not an electrical or plumbing license, so a dead outlet, a fixture swap, a running toilet, or a leaking trap gets a licensed contractor rather than me, and I will line them up and meet them at the house. Battery-powered deadbolt-replacement locks I can change out between tenants, which is a genuinely useful thing on a rental. Hardwired anything, no.

If you own more than one rental here, or you own one and live off-island, the sensible arrangement is standing rather than per-turnover. Property care covers the between-times: the mid-tenancy repair call, the seasonal exterior work, the inspection you should be doing anyway. Turnovers then become short, because the house was never allowed to fall behind.