[casita37]

Actually, you can determine a lot of the things you listed. Dirt and paint are obvious. Loose drawers, non-working burners, things like that, can be found with a bit more thorough inspection. However, you are right, not everything can be found. You are not going to run the washer on delicate prior to every tenant, so some common sense and, as you said, communication is important. And even though you don't run the washer between EVERY tenant, you really should do a COMPLETE inspection every so often. Kind of like taking your car in for a 5000 mile check up, where they go over it from end to end, run all systems, etc.

The items the OP mentioned were pretty obvious and are the type of thing that can cause a bad first impression.....and it's downhill from there.

As for it being in the lease that the tenant tell us when something doesn't work, that means if it breaks while they are living there. You can inspect a stove, it's working great, tenant moves in and lives there for a few months and then the burner goes out. That's what that means. We also put in our leases that we had the right to inspect, with 48 hours notice, at any time. We never did do that, and after a tenant left, we usually were wishing we had....LOL

[TrudyM]

When you have people leaving one day and new people coming in the next I don't see the time for a complete check every little thing go thru.

But filthy obviously is a problem. Most owners managers want to fix anything that isn't up to standards. I grew up in a family owned rental cottages and ski lodge and people can be and usually are really hard on stuff they don't own.
We have for 30 years rented from owners (alot are handled by management companies or have maintence/cleaning contracts with a local) when we go home to Hawaii. I have often wished I could hold back 20% of the final payment until after a walk thru so I could be assured that issues would be fixed, but that is not the system so you throw the dice and hope for the best when you are unable to rent a known quantity. And the landlord is taking his chances on us also when we are unkown to him but then he has the security deposit to help offset the risk.