The way you handle maintenance requests from your tenants will impact whether or not you are able to retain those tenants for the long term. If you’re responsive and efficient, they’ll be more likely to stay with you. When you drag your feet or ignore the repairs that need to be made, you’re likely to lose those tenants when the lease period ends.
A consistent and quick response will also help you do a better job of maintaining your Cleveland rental property. You don’t want deferred and unreported maintenance issues to drive those costs up.
Here are some expert tips from your professional property management resource in Cleveland. We’re going to tell you exactly how to complete those requests in today’s blog.
Establish Emergency and Routine Repair Processes
For routine repairs, we like to have those requests in writing. It allows us to document when the request came in, how we responded, and what was ultimately done to rectify the situation. This gives us an informal report of all the work that is done at your property. We know how often the dishwasher leaks, for example, or when there was last a problem with the heat. Our tenants make routine repair requests through their online portal.
Tenants requesting emergency repairs often do not have time to put their requests in writing. Fires, floods, and other emergencies require an immediate phone call to our management team. We get as much information as we can from the tenants, and then we dispatch the right vendor to the home.
It’s important to help tenants understand what qualifies as an emergency and what is a routine request. You don’t need to be called in the middle of the night to reset a garbage disposal or repair a cracked cupboard.
Vendors are Critical to Cleveland Rental Property Repairs
Part of a responsive maintenance process is assembling a team of qualified and reliable vendors and contractors. These are the professionals you’ll send out to respond to your tenant’s maintenance requests.
Having relationships with these vendors in place before you need them is important. If your tenant reports an overflowing toilet in the middle of a holiday weekend, you want to know exactly who to call. It’s not a great time to be searching online for help.
We often have owners ask if they can do their own work. This may seem like a money saver, but if you can’t get to the work that’s needed until the weekend or you have trouble locating a part that you need, tenants will quickly grow frustrated with the amount of time it’s taking to get something fixed.
Follow Up with Cleveland Tenants
Once the work is complete, make sure your tenants are satisfied.
Contact them by phone or email to ensure the repair was completed and their experience with the vendors or maintenance staff was pleasant. This will help you understand your own process and whether it’s effective. It will also let your tenants know that you care about their comfort and their rental experience.
These are our best expert tips when it comes to responding to tenant maintenance requests. For additional questions about Cleveland property management, please contact us at IIP Management. We work with owners in the Greater Cleveland area.
