What You Need To Know To Sucessfully Maintain Your Rental Property
Posted: Friday, March 20, 2009
by Mark Petrelis
Maintain your rental property by creating a cost effective rental property maintenance plan.
Its 8:30 at night, your tenant calls and says water is leaking very badly under the sink.
Its 8:30 at night, your tenant calls and says the toilets clogged.
Its 8:30 at night, your tenant calls and says a window just got smashed.
Its 8:30 at night, your tenant calls and says the heats not working.
Its 8:30 at night, your tenant calls and says the bedroom doorknob fell off.
How about a gutter gets disconnected. No big deal, when it rains make sure your not standing underneath it. Winter comes, where water hits ground, it starts to collect and then it freezes. Whoops, someone slips there and you get sued. Big problem. It pays to maintain your rental property.
How about that exterior porch wood that needs painting. No big deal. Next year. Next year comes and goes and you saved 700 bucks not doing it. Three years later you spend $2000 having wood replaced because its to rotted. Big problem. It pays to maintain your rental property.
You get the idea, whether something breaks or routine maintenance - things need to get fixed and or maintained. Learning to cost effectively maintain your rental property helps ensure profitable rental property investing.
Who is responsible for getting things fixed, who is going to fix it and when will things get fixed should be part of the lease or included as an addendum to the lease. Having a game plan for these things is vital for maintaining your rental property.This ensures the tenant knows ahead of time what to expect and how you maintain your rental property.
So, you is responsible for getting things fixed? Is tenant responsible for taking care of any problems that arise or is everything landlords responsibility. Who ever you choose to make responsible, make it clear in the lease so tenant understands how you maintain your rental property.
Some things to consider in regards to who will be responsible for maintaining your rental property. If tenant is responsible for anything regarding maintaining your rental property, will they have the money to take care of the maintenance issue.
Are the tenants responsible enough to take care of maintenance repairs. If they say they will take care of it and they don't or have it fixed poorly, could it lead to bigger problems down the road?
Is tenant expected to be home to let someone in or is it landlords responsibility to let repair person in the apartment. All my apartments are on a master key which ensures gaining entry into apartment is not an issue for any repairs. The more "what ifs" that can be addressed and included in the lease, regarding how you maintain your rental property, the smoother and less stressful maintaining your rental property will be.
Personally, I prefer to be responsible for making sure things that break and routine maintenance are taken care of. In other words, its my rental property, and I know how I want to maintain my rental property best.
That way, I know things are getting fixed properly. If broken item was caused by the tenants , I get it fixed according to my rental property maintenance plan and then expect to be reimbursed within 30 days or money automatically will be deducted from security. Of course this is all included in the lease or made part or the addendum to the lease.
Now we have established who is responsible for maintaining your rental property. Lets address who is actually going to be fixing the broken thing or do the required maintenance?
You, the rental property owner, your payroll help, a hired handyman, who is going to actually be doing the physical work for fixing and maintaining your rental property. Why is it important to have this be part of how you maintain your rental property?
Well, what you don't want is, having every time something needs to be repaired become a stressful costly headache.
By knowing who is going to be doing the repairs for your rental property in place ahead of time, through your rental property maintenance plan, you eliminate two potential problems.
One, when a problem does occur, your somewhat prepared by having had developed a list of contacts ahead of time. Secondly, being prepared like this, tremendously reduces stress and makes maintaining your rental property easy. Do you understand the importance of knowing who is responsible for and who will actually be doing the maintenance and repair work to your rental property?
Include in the lease, who you plan to have to be responsible for and actually doing your rental property maintenance work, so its clear to you and the tenants how you maintain your rental property.
A few additional things to consider regarding how to maintain your rental property. The number of rental units you have will largely determine who is going to do your repairing and maintenance work. For instance, if your just starting out and buy a multifamily unit, you may want to be hands on and do as much as possible for maintaining your rental property.
If you have five multifamily units, you probably can spend your time better elsewhere than physically maintaining your rental property.
If you decide to hire a maintenance man to do the maintenance on your rental property, ask around local hardware stores for referrals or ask people in a Home depot or Lowes. They're not supposed to refer people but I have been pleasantly surprised how many people moonlight or know someone fair priced and reliable to help do rental property maintenance and repairing.
Look in a local paper for a handy man you can enlist to do the maintenance on your rental property. Call a few people placing adds, not big print adds, rather the small adds and tell them what kind of help your looking for. Listen to them give their spiel, ask questions and ask if they can offer you anyone who they worked for in past as a recommendation. If they check out tell them you'll be giving them a call when you need them.
Personally, I do not recommend hiring a management company to maintain your rental property.
Another great place to get names of reliable people to do your rental property repairs and maintenance is through your local REIA group. The more names and numbers for cost effective, reliable maintenance men to help maintain your rental property, the better. Put their names, numbers and what they do into your cell phone or keep them in a special book.
Who might you want to have on your rental property maintenance list before you even need them? A few general handyman, a furnace repair man unless you may want to get repair contracts from gas company for furnace repair if possible, an exterminator ( I actually have contracts for quarterly prevention with exterminator on all my units), an appliance repair man if you supply appliances, a plumber, a drain cleaning company and someone to shovel or plow your rental properties.
If you went on to own a lot of multifamily units, you may want to considering hiring someone on full time to maintain your rental property with you managing them. Personally I prefer having a large network of contacts I can call on for rental property maintenance repair and count on over having employees.
When will things be repaired. Put in the lease or addendum how long you have to make arrangements to have things fixed, twenty four, forty eight, seventy two hours? Put it in the lease so tenant knows what to expect when things break and how you maintain your rental property.
Remember, your in charge. Its your property and having a rental property management plan and informing your tenants how you maintain your rental property will make owning rental property all the better.
As they say in the hood, everyone knows what time it is.
Mark Petrelis has owned rental property, primarily 2-6 unit buildings since "92". Some of the rental properties were total rehabs while others had existing tenants and only needed cosmetics
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