While some may think that being a landlord is a simple and straightforward job, there is a lot that goes into being a landlord that the average person may not even think about if they don’t own multiple properties. One of the most important and tedious tasks that a landlord must stay on top of is maintenance of their properties. While homeowners typically fix things in their home when they notice an issue, landlords don’t have the convenience of being at their property every day. They must prevent issues before they happen, and be able to respond quickly when a tenant reports something wrong. Below are a few tips to help landlords stay on top of rental property maintenance.
Keep a Schedule for Preventative Maintenance
Waiting until a tenant contacts you when something breaks is not the best practice for landlords. Instead, it is important to perform preventative maintenance regularly. Create a schedule that you can stick to, whether that be seasonally or every couple of months. Every time you go to the property, check the condition of the appliances, the floors, the cabinets, the basement, the roof, etc. Also, pay attention to the lifespan of your appliances. In addition to checking them every couple of months, be sure to plan ahead to replace items well before the end of their lifespan. This way, you can potentially save money by buying new appliances on sale, rather than having to rush to replace one if it breaks.
Automate as much as Possible
The more that you can automate at your rental properties, the less work you will have to do and the safer things will be for your tenants. Consider installing things such as motion-sensored lights for the outside of the house, or lights that can be put on a timer for hallways of apartment complexes. There are a ton of smart-home style products on the market, so take a look into what works best for your properties. One great product for landlords is our PumpSpy SmartPump, which allows you to keep an eye on your sump pump 24/7 with PumpSpy’s free monitoring service. This, as well as our other sump pump solutions, will prevent you from experiencing a flood in any of your rental properties.
Standardize Your Properties
Most landlords manage multiple properties, and it is a good idea to use the same paint, flooring, hardware, and smart home accessories across all properties. When repairs need to be done, it’ll be easy to keep extra paint and parts so that you always have them on hand, and it won’t matter which property needs the repair. Similarly, if you install one PumpSpy SmartPump, you should install them in all your properties. The PumpSpy app makes it extremely easy to manage all of your properties in one place, and you will receive alerts if anything goes wrong with your sump pump at any one of your properties.
Following these tips will definitely make your job as a landlord much less complicated. Always stay on top of preventative maintenance before things go wrong, automate as much as possible, and use the same materials and products across all rental properties. We kept landlords in mind when designing our sump pump solutions, as all of our products include free monitoring and can be managed all in one place in our easy-to-use app. You will have 24/7 peace of mind knowing that you will be alerted if anything goes wrong with any of the sump pumps at your rental properties, and knowing that you are avoiding a flooded basement. For more information about PumpSpy’s innovative smart home sump pump technologies, call 1-833-PUMPSPY.
