Landlords know that one of the biggest time-drains of owning rental property is the aspect of maintaining and caring for assets. This article will show you how to increase your efficiency in dealing with maintenance calls or requests for any rental property under your ownership.
Know your strengths! The most important aspect of maintaining a rental property is to know you’re strengths and weaknesses. If you are handy, you likely have quite a few strengths to your advantage and might want to consider the cost savings of doing some of the work yourself. If you’ve never plunged a toilet, you might want to consider hiring a plumber, or subcontractor for other services. Be realistic about your strengths and weaknesses.
Once you have assessed your strengths and weaknesses, you’ll have a plan to move forward when calls come in. When they are received, it’s important that you are immediately responsive. This not only is a huge benefit for your tenant and will keep them around longer, it is helpful to keep your asset in great condition. The longer you ignore problems, the worse they get. React immediately according to your strengths and weaknesses.
Develop a team. As you grow your portfolio, you won’t have the time or interest in working on all of your investments. It’s important to develop good community relationships and treat your subcontractors right. Relationships keep cost down and responsiveness up. If folks like doing business with you, you’ll have better services for your properties.
Trust but verify. Now that you have a team in place and a well-oiled machine, you’ll want to trust them to do good work, but verify that the work is being done appropriately. Check in on some projects, and talk to the subcontractors and tenants. If a subcontractor is getting callbacks, or is less responsive, you should have another service lined up. While you still keep your main relationship, the secondary service provider will challenge the initial service provider to keep response high, and keep costs down. If the initial provider continues to fail, you’re second service provider can become your first in line for the call.
Two- Way Communication. As a landlord, communication is sometimes the hardest aspect of the many relationships that you are managing. You’ll want to hear from the tenants to be sure a job is done correctly and they are happy. You’ll want to hear from the subcontractors to see what they’ve coordinated, cost, and what the issue was for the repair. You’ll likely be checking in with your accountant often, and anyone else on your team that is vital to operations. To keep processes efficient, remember that communication goes both ways. It’s important that you reach out to them just as much as they should be contacting you.
Your tenants are your customers. Create a standard survey to send to each tenant after a maintenance service was completed. This will allow your tenants to provide feedback on your response time and the subcontractor. Surveys can be automatic and relatively easy to produce. While you think your system is working well, a survey may tell you otherwise! Always welcome feedback.
With quick tips, any landlord can easily increase their efficiency with maintenance request or repairs for residential rental properties.
