Staying on top of rental property maintenance is essential when you want to ensure the value of your investment remains high. Good maintenance policies also promote tenant retention and satisfaction.
Here are our most essential tips for maintaining your Memphis investment property. Partnering with a property manager is probably your best solution for high-quality, cost-effective maintenance and repairs.
Have Emergency Maintenance Plans in Place for Memphis Rental Properties
Emergency maintenance issues rarely occur at 3:00 p.m. on a slow Tuesday.
Instead, they happen in the middle of the night or over holiday weekends or when you’re on vacation. As a rental property owner, you need a plan in place for how you’ll respond to unexpected maintenance emergencies. Who will your tenants call? Who will you send to do the work?
Talk to tenants about what constitutes an emergency. A closet door that’s sticking doesn’t require you to drop everything and head over to the property. But, a toilet that won’t flush is an emergency in a home with one bathroom. A loss of heat in the winter is definitely an emergency, and any fires or floods should definitely inspire an immediate response.
Your residents need to know how to reach you, and you need to have a reliable and solid plan for managing emergencies.
Collect Routine Maintenance Requests in Writing
While you’ll want tenants to call you when there’s a pipe that’s burst or a tree that’s fallen through the roof, routine repairs like that sticking closet door should be made in writing. Most Memphis property managers have an online platform that makes this easy. Without such software, you’ll need to be creative. Ask your tenants to send you the repair request via email or text message. This accomplishes a couple of important things.
- It helps you stay organized when you have a written record of the work that’s needed.
- It provides documentation. When a tenant tries to complain that they requested work months ago and you can show that it was only requested a couple of days ago, you’ll protect yourself and keep everyone accountable.
Make sure your tenant understands how you want repair requests to be submitted. Discuss this at move-in, and include instructions in the lease agreement.
Vendor and Contractor Relationships
If you have no idea where to turn for good vendors and contractors, ask a Memphis property management company (like us) for referrals. We work with plumbers, electricians, roofers, HVAC technicians, cleaners, landscapers, and other professionals all the time. There’s a lot of value in having relationships in place with reliable vendors, especially now, when they’re busy and selective about who they’ll work with and which projects they’ll take on.
Communicate Throughout the Maintenance Process
Make sure you’re staying in touch with your tenants while repairs are being made. It’s always a good idea to communicate more than you normally would in times like this. Check in to see if the vendor arrived as planned, and follow up after the work is done.
If there’s going to be a delay while you wait for a part or a replacement, let them know why that’s happening. Your residents deserve to be part of the conversation when people are coming into their home to evaluate, fix, and replace things.
Finally, consider working with a professional Memphis property management company. When you have a local property management team taking care of your investment, you don’t have to worry about a good maintenance process. Your property managers have one in place already.
Please contact us at CrestCore Realty. We’re here to help with all of your Memphis property management, leasing, and maintenance needs.