Sealant repairs for landlords and agents

A bathroom with black joints reads as a neglected property. It is the first thing an incoming tenant photographs and the first thing a checkout clerk writes down, and it makes every other issue in the report look worse than it is.

Resealing a bathroom is an afternoon and a fixed price. Almost nothing else on a maintenance list changes the impression of a property that much for that little, which is why it is worth doing between tenancies rather than when somebody complains.

Mould in a bathroom is a live dispute between landlords and tenants, and it is usually both parties being partly right. A joint full of mould gets replaced. A room full of mould is a ventilation and heating question, and a new bead will not touch it.

Where that is what is found, it goes in writing with the photographs: what was resealed, what was not, and what is actually causing the spotting. That is more use to a landlord than a clean line and silence, because it is the document that decides who pays for what later.

Sealant appears on inventories in a handful of standard forms, and they are not equivalent. Discoloured or stained sealant is usually fair wear, especially after a long tenancy in a room with poor ventilation. Sealant that is missing, cut away, painted over or filled with something that is not sealant is damage, and it is the kind that is usually chargeable.

Mould is the one that turns into a dispute, because both sides have a point. A tenant who never opened a window contributed to it. A landlord whose extractor has not worked for three years contributed to it too. The photographs and a plain written note of what was found are what turn that argument into a decision, and that is the reason both come as standard rather than on request.

Where the room itself is the problem rather than the joint, the note says so. That is not the answer an instructing agent is usually hoping for, and it is more use than a clean line and silence, because a bathroom resealed every eighteen months is a bathroom nobody has actually fixed.

The single biggest cost in resealing an occupied property is not the work. It is the access: a time window agreed with somebody at their own home, a room that has to be dry when we arrive, and a full day afterwards when the bath cannot be used.

In a void, none of that applies. Keys from the office, the room dry because nobody has used it, and the curing happening overnight with nobody inconvenienced. If a property is between tenancies for even a few days, that is the window to book, and several voids in the same week are worth grouping into one day.