CEO and Founder of L.A. Property Management Group and Crown Commercial Property Management.
In my three decades of property management, I’ve seen the best and the worst of what this industry has to offer. I’ve seen impressive workmanship and a few tragic mistakes. I’ve seen someone ignore a termite report, thinking the problem couldn’t really be that bad, and then have to entirely reframe a four-unit building, replacing every single piece of wood in two of the units. The foolish owner in that scenario? That was me. I was relatively lucky—it only ended up costing me $50,000 to fix that quadruplex, but that’s still an expensive lesson.
I’ve written about preventative maintenance before, but it’s a subject I couldn’t possibly exhaust in one article—or ten. Nor can I overstate its importance to this industry. It might be the best thing property managers do for rental property owners, maybe even the best case for property managers to exist at all.
Preventative maintenance isn’t just about cautionary tales. You’re not just averting disaster by taking these measures; you’re shrewdly pushing your property to the highest level of its potential profits. It’s better to go out of your way to do something smart than it is to just avoid doing something dumb.
To that end, here are three preventative maintenance tips that can significantly impact the “health” of your building in the long term.
1. Conduct main line cleaning.
This service scrubs out your main line of any debris or blockages. It can extend the life of your building’s sewer main by many, many years. In my experience, it’s one of the most effective but neglected maintenance hacks out there.
Don’t assume your current management has already thought to have it done—this is something to ask about. The cost of a new main line is typically far higher than the cost of getting a main line cleaned.
This also serves as a fairly reliable measure of capable managers. If your management company can tell you the last time they scrubbed out your main, you’re probably in good hands.
2. Clean your gutters and downspouts.
Sounds stupid simple, but a lot of people never have it done. It’s extremely important to help water drain from the roof. Especially in a year like the one we’ve had, with record rainfall in L.A., gutter and downspout cleaning goes a long way in keeping your property safe and leak-proof.
Anybody who’s ever had to deal with a mold remediation situation can attest to the importance of keeping unwanted moisture out of a rental property—and the astronomical costs that can come with failure to do so. I walked through a prospective client’s building a week ago that had three apartment units stacked on top of each other, all of them entirely ruined by one leak.
3. Hire strategically.
The third hack wears boots! That’s right; it’s a team that keeps a careful calendar and performs all of the above and more maintenance actions on a regularly scheduled basis. Once, I was walking around a property to inspect it when my colleague and I found a lit pilot light that was burning yellow, which meant it was emitting carbon monoxide. Thankfully we took action and immediately fixed the issue, but we might not have had the chance if we hadn’t been there in the first place conducting our inspection.
If you’re a rental property owner looking to hire a property management company, the best way to apply this advice is to search for a company with an in-house maintenance team that proactively prioritizes preventative maintenance. (Try to say that three times fast). Ask them how often they physically visit the properties they manage. If they’re only there at the owner’s request or if there’s a problem, they’re not there often enough.
If you’re a property manager, I recommend bringing on maintenance professionals who faithfully follow a strict schedule for walking the properties you oversee rather than just being ready when the owner calls. I’ve written before about how to build a winning team in property management, and those principles apply here as well.
None of this is rocket science or requires cutting-edge technology. I didn’t get my Ph.D. from Harvard in property management. But sometimes, the simple fixes are the most impactful, and if you overlook them, you risk winding up in one of my many cautionary tales.
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