Rental property maintenance is a fact of life for all Tampa landlords, no matter how new your property is or what kind of condition it’s in. You’ll need to be prepared to respond to routine and emergency repair requests from your tenants.
Today, we’re sharing some tips that will help you handle these maintenance issues like a professional Tampa property manager.
Establish Vendor Relationships
Before you can take care of any maintenance, you have to have the professionals in place who can make the repairs that will ultimately be needed. We recommend that you establish these relationships early. You don’t want to have a major water leak at 2:00 in the morning on a weekend without a single plumber on your contact list. Instead, you want a plumber who knows you and your property who will pick up the phone and help you out. Look for vendors who are licensed and insured. It’s not worth the liability to save a few dollars on repairs by using an unlicensed vendor or an unskilled handyman. Insist on professionalism.
Be Available for Emergencies
Your tenants will need a way to contact you 24 hours a day and seven days a week. If something goes terribly wrong at your property, you’ll need to respond to it immediately. Fires, floods, and habitability issues cannot wait until the next business day. Tampa gets hot, and not just in the summer. If a tenant is without air conditioning, you need to fix it right away. Make sure you are prepared to take care of these things within moments of them being reported. If you’re going out of town or you know you’ll be unavailable, have someone else in place to take over.
Avoid Deferred Maintenance
One of the best ways to increase your repair costs is by deferring necessary maintenance. Don’t put off the small issues because they’ll only grow into larger and more expensive issues. That leak under the sink in the second bathroom may not be causing any real inconveniences now, but in a couple of months, you could find yourself not only repairing the leak, but also the rot and the mold that’s underneath that sink. Respond to those routine problems promptly and with a sense of urgency, even if they don’t seem like a big deal.
Practice Preventative Maintenance
Have your systems inspected, cleaned, and serviced on a regular basis. Your heating and cooling system is probably one of the most expensive elements of your investment property. You don’t want to replace it because it will cost you thousands of dollars. So, get a service contract in place with an HVAC company to have the furnace and the air conditioning unit inspected once or twice a year. You’ll extend the lifespan of your system and ensure it keeps running efficiently. Do the same thing with gutters, roofs, and landscaping. When there’s a scheduled set of eyes on these things, maintaining the condition of your property gets a lot easier.
These are some of the things we do as professional property managers in Tampa. If you’d like to hear more, contact us at Real Property Management Instant Equity. We’d love to help you solve some of your residential management problems.
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