Your Maintenance Dream Team
In addition to the cadre of independent contractors who do initial rehabs and between-tenant turns for our owners, we have a team of skilled people on our payroll. Being employees, they are covered by our general liability and worker’s compensation insurance policies.
We will only allow our employees to work in tenant-occupied units as a liability mitigation measure. We cannot send people we do not know into tenant’s homes.
A talented team of both W-2 employees and independent contractors is the key to flexibility, safety, and profitability.
Our senior maintenance team members can do most HVAC, plumbing, and minor electrical work. They have decades of experience between them and have been with us for several years. The hourly cost of our employees is not insignificant.
However, our owners have found over the years that having our people handle an HVAC emergency or a broken pipe situation in the dead of winter is far cheaper than hiring a third-party contractor to do the same work – even after hours.
Our tenant service standard is to complete routine requests within 72 hours and to stay in touch with the tenant throughout the process. There is nothing more frustrating for a tenant than having something broken in their home and not being able to get it fixed.
Our property management software vendor, Appfolio, provides us with a 24-hour answering service for maintenance requests from our tenants. If a tenant has an emergency situation or a routine request, they contact the service through an app on their phone or call an 800 number and speak to a live person.
The system allows us to designate what is considered an emergency and who is to be contacted to do the work for each unit under management. If an owner is doing his or her own maintenance, the service will contact the owner directly.
All maintenance requests are documented on our management portal and the Appfolio mobile tablet application. Our maintenance team members each carry an Android-based tablet with the Appfolio application installed.
We’re professionals; we have a lot of tools at our disposal and want to share them with our clients to bring them greater ease of access and peace of mind. That’s what a good management team can do for you.
Final Thoughts
As a property owner-investor, the decisions you make are ultimately yours. Whether you find success as a real estate investor often hinges on the ability to make not only smart investments but also smart decisions. For many people, having a property management team to do much of the work they don’t have time to do – or simply don’t want to do – is invaluable.
We offer our clients a service, and it is a business, but we also make it our goal to care for your properties as if they were our own.
If you’ve gone into this business, there are probably some areas you enjoy more than others. Wouldn’t you like the freedom to put your time, effort, and focus into those spaces instead of taxing yourself working on areas you dislike? Even hate?
Your property management team can free you up to shift that focus where it feels right to you. Spend your time doing what you do best, and we’ll spend ours doing the same.
