Maintenance teams are the very core of every apartment community, keeping operations running smoothly and residents happy. They are responsible for a multitude of day-to-day tasks around apartment communities – they fulfill resident work orders and tend to onsite amenities, like pools and washing machines. But one thing they didn’t sign up to do is pick up unscooped pet waste. 

With a sizable increase in the number of pet owners living in an apartment community, the amount of pet waste found within a community is sure to pile up. Relying on maintenance teams to remedy the problem is no longer a feasible option. In fact, utilizing maintenance teams to pick up waste is most likely costing operators valuable time, equating to a substantial loss in revenue. 

Maintenance professionals worldwide will tell you that there is never a dull moment throughout their work day. From ensuring units are ready for move-in to tending to the countless resident maintenance requests pouring in, they don’t have a moment to spare. Yet, when the need arises to clean the community and pick up unscooped pet waste, they are still the ones called on. However, by doing so, operators are ultimately doing a disservice to the entire community, including themselves and onsite teams.  

While many operators are looking to improve maintenance efficiencies and streamline workflows with mobile maintenance systems, unscooped pet waste remains the hindrance that stifles all these efforts. Maintenance teams can spend an abundance of time, in many cases one to two days per week, picking up pet waste around a community. That inevitably impacts their ability to quickly respond to the wealth of tasks already on their plates – and residents certainly take notice of those delays. 

Operators have tried just about everything in an attempt to dwindle the amount of unscooped pet waste at their communities, but those efforts still seem to come up drastically short of providing a sustainable solution to the challenge. To finally put an end to this seemingly never ending problem, an increasing number of operators are taking a more forward-thinking approach and turning to proactive solutions like enlisting a biotechnology service that performs DNA testing of pet waste. 

More than 7,000 communities spanning the globe have tapped into the holistic approach of biotechnology services and an overwhelming number of them have reported a 95% reduction in the amount of unscooped pet waste at their respective communities. That level of improvement greatly deducts the time that maintenance teams have to spend correcting what’s really the responsibility of the pet owner. 

Ultimately, everything ties back to resident satisfaction. Taking away time from the maintenance team definitely impacts the bottom line. If they can’t turn an apartment quickly enough or get to work orders in a timely manner, resident satisfaction will significantly drop and the domino effect negatively impacts everybody and everything, including NOI.