Keeping your Coos Bay rental property well-maintained and up to date is one of your most important responsibilities as a landlord, and the property’s habitability is a legal requirement. One way to protect the condition and integrity of your investment is by responding quickly and efficiently to tenant maintenance requests.
These requests that come in will range from simple repair work such as fixing leaky faucets all the way to emergency calls for help that involve floods and fires. No one likes to spend a lot of time dwelling on what might go wrong, but you have to be prepared for the maintenance work you’ll be called to complete. It’s important that repairs are handled appropriately in order to ensure your tenants are satisfied and your property is protected.
We’re talking about best practices for handling repair and maintenance requests submitted by your tenants.
Emergency Maintenance Requests in Coos Bay Rental Homes
Following any kind of process might fly out the window when an emergency strikes.
It’s still a good idea to have a consistent and documented process in place.
First, be sure your tenants understand what emergencies are. Anything can feel like an emergency. That broken closet door or the clogged garbage disposal - inconvenient, but probably not an emergency-level repair.
A toilet that’s not flushing right is actually not an emergency if there is another toilet or two in the property. If it’s a one-bathroom home, an incapacitated toilet is an emergency.
Be specific about what qualifies as an emergency, because those are the calls you’ll be getting in the middle of the night or over the weekend or while you’re on vacation.
Generally speaking, emergencies involve floods, fire, or sewage.
Instruct your tenants to call you when an emergency repair is needed, as soon as it is safe to do so. Make sure they have your best contact information.
What will you do when that emergency is reported?
First, make sure the emergency doesn’t have an opportunity to get worse. If a pipe has burst inside the house, turn off the water. It helps if your resident knows where to find critical things such as the water and gas shut-offs.
Once the initial damage is done and the crisis is stopped, the appropriate restoration methods can be begun. Assess the damage and call your vendors.
Routine Repairs in Coos Bay Rental Homes
Routine repairs probably do not require a phone call, and you’ll find it’s easier for tenants to submit a written request for basic maintenance.
Your tenants will still expect an efficient response, and if you’re interested in retaining those tenants, you’ll want to act quickly. Let them know that you’ve received their repair request, and you’re working on it.
As a Coos Bay property management company, we have access to great technology. It provides our renters with an online tenant portal, where residents can make routine requests when something is wrong or needs attention. These repairs are often responded to in a day or two, so nothing is delayed.
We like collecting written repair requests for general maintenance because:
Tenants can make requests on their own time. They don’t have to worry about waiting until normal business hours or bothering you at night.
It documents when the request came in.
It allows tenants to be as detailed as possible in describing what is wrong. Pictures and videos can even be uploaded in tenant portals to show what’s going on.
You’ll also have a record of how the repair was handled. You have a written timeline and a sequence of events that can protect you if a tenant claims a repair was not made. This can be helpful when preventative maintenance may be needed going forward. If you’re trying to decide when to replace a refrigerator, for example, you can review how often you’ve had to fix it in the last year or two.
Document Your Maintenance Process in the Lease Agreement
Put your process in writing for emergency and routine repairs. A written process allows you to remain consistent. It’s also easy to share with tenants and even vendors. You can refer to it when you want to double-check something, make improvements, or update how things are done.
Discuss this section of the lease agreement when you’re going over the particulars of the lease with new tenants who are preparing to move in. The lease is also the right place to outline who is responsible for which items when it comes to maintaining your property. As the landlord, you’ll be responsible for maintaining the major systems and functions of the home. You’ll have to keep the air conditioning, heat, plumbing, and electricity in good condition. You can expect your tenants to help; they can be responsible for changing air filters and light bulbs, and for keeping the property clean and free of pests, trash, and debris.
One thing to be absolutely clear about is that you want to be notified right away if something breaks or needs maintenance. Sometimes, tenants will hesitate to report maintenance issues. They’ll worry that they’re going to get blamed. Maybe they won’t want to bother you for a repair that they see as unimportant.
But, deferred and unreported maintenance is always more expensive than an immediate response, however. Write into the lease agreement that tenants are responsible for reporting maintenance immediately.
Follow Up with Tenants
After the work has been completed, get in touch with your tenants to ensure everything is fixed and functional. You can find out if they have any feedback; was the vendor polite and on time?
Make this check-in with your tenants part of your process for responding to maintenance requests. They’ll appreciate that you’re thorough, and they’ll feel good about providing their thoughts on how the work was handled. This can help you with tenant retention and also with vendor selection. Hopefully, you have a great network of vendors and contractors, but if something went wrong with a plumber or an electrician, you want to know about it.
These are the best practices we can share with you when it comes to maintaining rental properties and establishing a process for tenants to request maintenance. If you’d like to talk about our Coos Bay property management and maintenance plans, please contact us at Oregon Bay Properties.
