Keep Your Tenants Content With These 3 Property-Protecting Maintenance Tips
Owning and managing a piece of property for a company like Condominium Management means that you must make maintenance improvements on a regular basis to ensure that your property and your tenants are protected and happy. Here are three things that you need to make sure you are doing:
1. Be Meticulous When It Comes to Trash Pickup.
One of the first things that can turn prospective tenants away, cause current tenants to leave before their lease is up and to ultimately degrade your property is trash sitting around dumpsters or outside of apartment doors. You need several dumpsters in the parking lot of your complex, but you may need to do more than that if it seems that these dumpsters can't hold all of your tenants' trash each week.
One option would be to hire a valet pickup service that will come around and pick up trash from outside of apartment doors. Some offer receptacles, while others simply have residents place the bags outside. You could always hire an employee to do this each day rather than an actual service, which could allow for residents to put trash out within a specific time period (such as 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.) rather than by 8 a.m. in the morning. You can have tenants pay for this service, a nominal fee that is added to rent.
2. Ensure Your Building Is Free from Pests.
One of the things that renters hate more than anything is pests, such as roaches and bed bugs, making a home in their personal space. In order to be successful, you need to make sure that you provide your tenants with a healthy, clean and pest-free environment. Routine pest control maintenance is an essential part of maintaining a good environment, which can be roughly $25 to $60 on a monthly basis or $30 to $110 quarterly. In extreme cases, when it is clear that one tenant is responsible for the outbreak, you can pass on the cost to them. You could allow them to pay it out with their rent or pay in a lump sum.
3. Create a System for Work Orders.
Most buildings require that tenants call in when they have a work order request. While this is still recommended, you may want to consider having another system that works in conjunction with the telephone orders. For example, you could hire an answering service to answer the phones when you are unable to do so. You could set up an online system that will allow for tenants to go online and report their issues, which could then be sent to you immediately via e-mail, text message or voicemail. You can even have an app created for easy access to logging maintenance requests via smartphones, computer and tablets.
However, even with all of these systems in place, they don't work to keep your tenants happy or protect your property if you don't work diligently to complete the work orders within a reasonable timeframe, such as 24 to 48 hours, depending on the severity of the issue. By having a good system in place and quickly getting back to your renters, you will show them that you have heard their needs and that you care about fixing them as quickly as possible.
Ultimately, for your property to be a success, you need to make sure that you perform proper maintenance tasks that will not only keep your property in tip-top shape, but that will also ensure your tenants stay happy with you and where they live.