Keep up on Your Maintenance
For landlords and maintenance workers in cold weather northern cities and regions, winter is especially harsh. And due to snow, ice, frigid temps, high winds and dangerous conditions, many maintenance jobs are put off until spring.
Yet you can schedule inspections in a safe manner and thus stay up on your property’s condition and tenant comfort. Good maintenance helps reduce those big repair bills.
Whether common rental house repairs or surprise emergency repairs in an apartment building, preventive and active maintenance adds value in many ways. Sometimes all we need is a pep talk to tackle work that’s a little mundane, but which can represent the highest long term value (LTV).
Make maintenance easier: Receive maintenance requests from tenants via ManageCasa. Report, collaborate on, and resolve issues efficiently by quickly assigning work orders to your in-house handyman or service pro. Send and receive bills for easy payment through the platform.
Protect Assets and Improve Accountability to Landlords
Smart maintenance management enables inspections and timely maintenance on roofs, utility pipes, HVAC systems and other equipment. You can use maintenance calls as a positive customer service act while staying on top of your rental property’s value. After all the smart management strategies a landlord or property manager uses, it’s a shame when emergencies ruin property value and ROI and damage relations with owners and tenants. And these losses aren’t always recoverable.
Accountability is important too. Often things fall through the cracks, because no one believes it’s their responsibility. Sometimes it’s a grey area, while others, someone has dropped the ball. Maintenance inspections and records help to resolve those weaknesses.
Find out more about how you can optimize your property maintenance using ManageCasa’s outstanding maintenance management features.
Utility pipes are always breaking somewhere when the polar vortex unleashes another frigid air mass down into North America (and the US and Germany too). What a mess when it happens. For apartment buildings and multifamily developments, winter is tough on roofs, gutters, utility pipes, exterior doors and windows. You can write off any repairs needed on your 2022 taxes, or you can write house or apartment renovation costs over years. Either way, inspections may lead to tax writeoffs. You may save on landlord and property insurance too.
Now that you’re property motivated, let’s talk about how to keep your maintenance staff or contractors busy with inspections, cleaning, and minor repairs to keep your properties safe and functional.
Using Your Maintenance Management Software
If maintenance is a burden to you, just use your favorite property management software’s maintenance management feature to automate the process, and reduce the fatigue of tenant service.
Focus on mechanical and features that are most likely to fail.
Items to monitor in the winter season in rental houses are furnace operation, water heater condition, snow blocking venting pipes, ice buildup on roof, roof leaks, cracks in concrete which salt and water will worsen, washing machine drain hoses loose, water leaks in roof, condensation in windows and sills, and sump pump operation.
The Maintenance Routine
- notify your tenant of your need to visit to inspect mechanical, utility, and other equipment as a precautionary measure using the work scheduling app
- use detailed maintenance inspection reports on your mobile phone or tablet device to record condition and take photos and videos
- allow tenants to submit a request directly on their smartphone via the ManageCasa app and attach photos or videos of the issue/item needing repair/maintenance
- notify contractors about inspection or maintenance tasks
- schedule appropriate maintenance routines for mechanical equipment
- discuss fees, collaborate on work to be done, and follow up on work within ManageCasa’s maintenance app
- view all photos and inspection reports and ensure all items are completed and follow up to ensure full completion
- record work times, % of completed work, and unresolved issues for performance reports
Built in Maintenance Management Services
ManageCasa’s maintenance management features are vital in servicing properties according to agreements with owners. In fact lease-based property management help you allocate maintenance expenses and repair costs giving you impressive budget management power and reporting to owners.
Property management companies can improve their own value proposition by focusing on regular maintenance routines, even in the winter.
Check out the Maintenance app right now, and see how it integrates with the full property management platform.
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