Each year the City of Oxford conducts rental inspections to ensure all properties are up to the local code, but nearly 16% of all properties inspected failed.
Rentals are inspected every 18 to 24 months, except for fraternity houses where inspections take place once a year. There are just over 4,000 rental properties in Oxford.
City planner Zachary Moore said properties can fail for all sorts of reasons.
“Even though a property or apartment unit may fail an inspection, it does not mean that it is in shambles,” Moore said. “A lot of the reasons properties fail are easy fixes like putting in a new fire extinguisher or new carbon monoxide detectors.”
In October 2023, Oxford launched the online rental dashboard alongside with the permit dashboard to create transparency between residents and city officials. These dashboards make it easier for prospective and current tenants to see if their landlords are keeping the properties up to code.
“We wanted a tool for people to use to see what properties are eligible to rent and which ones have passed or failed inspections more easily by making the data more transparent and available to the public,” Moore said.
In the past, the city outsourced inspections to National Inspection Cooperation, but decided a few years ago to do inspections in-house and hired two full-time inspectors to complete the work.
Property owners and managers can refuse an inspection, although it is uncommon. Between January 2021 and January 2024 nearly 10,000 properties were inspected. Of those, about 300 were “exterior only” inspections, meaning the property was only viewed from the outside.
In the same three-year period just over 1,000 properties failed the inspection. The rental dashboard does not include reasons why rental units have failed an inspection; it just states that the property violated local code.
Jorryn Gauthier’s apartment in Oxford Commons passed its most recent inspection, but she said there were still problems.
“The issues started on day one,” Gauthier said. “When my roommates and I moved in, the place was disgusting. We had them send out professional cleaning staff but they caused more damage than they helped.”
“For the first eight days we lived there, our unit had no hot water,” she added. “It took me threatening to call the health department for them to finally send maintenance. We also had no Wi-Fi for weeks on end despite it being an amenity listed in our leasing agreement.”
Oxford Commons is owned by Capstone Real Estate Investments, of Birmingham, Alabama. When contacted by telephone, a company representative declined to comment on this story.
