Reducing costly tenant turnover is the key to ongoing success of your property management business. Keeping your properties well maintained is one of the most important factors in improving tenant happiness and more importantly – keeping them around for the long haul. Here are a few simple ways that you can leverage your property maintenance process to further benefit your business.
Identify common requests
First, sit down with your team and collaborate to pinpoint the top 5-10 maintenance requests that come in on a regular basis. If you’re not sure, check back through the requests you’ve logged in your property and maintenance management software. This should help you narrow down the most common requests.
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Develop best practices for each request
Once you’ve got your list of common maintenance requests, you can begin going through and developing best practices for handling each one. A great rule of thumb is establishing a turnaround time or SLA (service level agreement) that should be met for each task. For instance, simple non-emergency maintenance requests should be completed in 3 business days, while more urgent requests should be handled within 24 hours, etc.
Introduce maintenance people to tenants
Whenever possible, introduce those you’ve got working on your properties to the people renting from you. This can help make everyone feel a little more comfortable when the time comes to get work done.
Foster open communication
The more everyone stays on the same page, the smoother each maintenance request will go. Encourage communication between the tenants, yourself or someone on your team and the maintenance workers.
Set expectations
Once you’ve gone through and created your best practices guideline, you should know offhand how long each type of request should take. Make sure this is clearly communicated to the tenants so that their expectations are on target. If any delays arise, pass the word along. Tenants appreciate being kept in the know – especially when it has to do with the upkeep and safety of their home.
Use the right tools for tracking requests
We mentioned it earlier, but property management and maintenance software is a very important tool for managing all incoming requests and making sure nothing slips through the cracks. If your software doesn’t offer this feature, it’s time to upgrade.
Follow up after the fact
Once a request is responded to and completed, it’s a nice touch to follow up with your tenants to make sure they’re satisfied with the work and get their feedback. This shows your renters that you care and goes a long way toward keeping them happy. It can also help you identify areas that may need some improvement in the future.
A huge part of managing properties is keeping up with incoming maintenance requests. By managing this part of your business effectively, you will also be able to keep tenants happy and reduce costly turnover as a result.
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Get your free copy of The Property Manager’s Guide to Proactive Management — and make the time necessary to plan for an extraordinary future.
