I’m curious and would like to see your thoughts/best practices when it comes to simple Maintenance requests…

Hey! I’m curious and would like to see your thoughts/best practices when it comes to simple Maintence requests…

When a resident puts in/requests a WO for a clogged toilet/sink, tripped breaker, A/C filter.

I know in single family, some companies/owners have a clause of a mandatory fee to come out, or it’s the residents responsibility under a certain amount.

Is there a way to implement that or other solutions to limit these type of WO’s?

We had them troubleshoot and ensure they did everything before we sent anyone out and then let them know the fee/cost would be charged back if it was due to tenant neglect and/or negligence

Depends on what is causing sewer problems? Are they putting something down drain? Toilet? Etc there not supposed to or is it some other problem?
One thing I did with a tenant that constantly called on holidays was went out and bought and expensive plunger had maintenance show him how to use it. The calls stopped happening so frequently.

I mean, giving good customer service usually covers those kinds of repairs. But I'm in big multifamily. Unless the fees are in the lease or resident handbook and spelled out as what can and cannot constitute an emergency or reasonable work order, you probably can't start doing it now because the particular WO is annoying for you. You can always encourage over the phone or zoom trouble shooting. Or have some good YouTube resources handy to help them self diagnose the problem. But also part of the few perks of renting specifically has to do with not having to fix stuff cause it's not "your" stuff to fix. Check your liability first and expect some irritated renters and potentially bad reviews if you change or do not properly communicate policy like this.

Put this in the lease..

Looks at the type of work orders you are having and see what trends you have. These interactions give you valuable information on what is happening at your property. If you are getting repetitive work orders figure out how to better address in your turn. For example we had constant complaints about drain backups. We started snaking all drains at the turnover. Removed a huge amount of work orders and those that didn’t we could draw a straight line back to the tenant who caused it.

If you have the ability to do a monthly preventative maintenance on these items you’re seeing often, I would go that route

We only charge if it was due to resident negligence.