Property Managers wear so many hats… but maintenance is one of your most important tasks when managing a community. Regular maintenance keeps your community safe, happy, and improves the property’s value. But you already know this, and understand how important promptly responding to a reported maintenance request is.
The burden can come when it feels like every maintenance request demands to be a “top priority.” How do you prioritize your maintenance work orders when every request feels like it must be the most important? While each request should be assessed and responded to within a timely manner, some tasks do require more focus. Here are some tips on how to reduce your stress with the Maintenance Process.
EVALUATE AND PRIORITIZE YOUR MAINTENANCE REQUESTS:
All maintenance requests will fall under one of these four categories: urgent, high-priority, medium-priority, and low priority. Here is how you can determine which is which. If you are struggling with identifying which projects to address first, mentally assign each repair request on a scale of 1-5. This will help you strip away any external factors and give an unbiased evaluation of the importance of each task.
Identifying Urgent or Emergency Maintenance:
Emergencies are pretty easy to spot. These are issues that immediately and effectively compromise the safety, general habitability, and long-term investment of the property. Issues like power loss, fire, or roof leaks are all emergencies. These problems could potentially cost thousands of dollars in damage if not immediately rectified. Since these tasks are so urgent and a quick response is key to ensure your tenants’ safety and protect the integrity of your property, it is a good idea to have a qualified and preferred vendor such as Champion Property Services available to promptly handle these requests.
Navigating High-Priority to Medium-Priority Maintenance:
While emergency maintenance tasks are clear and easy to assess. Figuring out the priority of high to medium maintenance tasks can become more difficult.
High priority tasks are maintenance issues that will directly affect operations in the near future. These might include leaking irrigation, termite infestation, or minor HVAC repairs. If ignored these issues could pose a high financial risk or will negatively impact your tenants’ ability to live safely in the unit.
Medium-priority maintenance tasks primarily consist of preventative
maintenance. These tasks are crucial to ensuring that your properties stay in top shape, and are essential to long-term operations in the community. These responsibilities are time-sensitive but not urgent. That being said, if you leave them unattended for too long, these problems could potentially compound or morph into a High Priority issue. Examples can include landscape maintenance tasks such as debris and bush removal for fire prevention, concrete repair by the pool, fence repair/replacement. Items like these need to be addressed but are not necessarily as time-sensitive.
Assessing Low Priority Tasks:
Low Priority Tasks are pretty easy to find. These requests neither pose a safety risk, risk damaging the property over time, nor do they prevent tenants from utilizing the community as needed. Low priority maintenance requests are often cosmetic and cause more of an annoyance than pose a threat. Tasks like replacing the umbrellas at the pool, cosmetic wall repairs, small painting jobs, etc. These are items that should be completed eventually to avoid complaints from your association.
YOU CAN PREVENT EMERGENCY REQUESTS WITH REGULARLY SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE:
Whether you want to admit it or not… completing regular maintenance reduces downtime and long-term costs for your community. It also prevents you from being liable due to an unaddressed situation. Keeping track with a running list of work that needs to be performed, with their associated priority level, will help you create a roadmap of success for the community. In fact, this is the first thing that Champion Property Services does when you sign up for our Monthly Maintenance Program. Plus once you are a member of the program, you will save even more time and money! Find out how here...
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