Managing a rental property can be daunting, from dealing with tenant complaints to repairing busted pipes or paying more for rates, levies, or security features. All this may be overwhelming for landlords solely in the rental business to generate additional income.
Regardless, landlords must know how to deal with these issues because they are unavoidable in the rental property business.
Therefore, here are three practical ways to reduce rental property maintenance.
Hire A Property Manager
Many landlords struggle to manage their rental properties. This is because most landlords are not full-time property managers, they have their jobs, families, and other businesses to run.
A property manager will always be available to respond to tenant requests quickly. In addition to replying to tenants, property managers are also responsible for inspections, repairs, maintenance, and ensuring that tenants pay their rent promptly.
Unlike landlords, property managers have practices that streamline the tasks of tenant screenings, lease applications, and automatic rental payments. These processes, like those used by property management companies in Santa Monica, help reduce administrative workloads and therefore result in fewer property vacancies.
Delsuites is a short-term rental property service provider. The company provides the best property management Toronto GTA services to tenants and landlords.
Use A Property Management System
If you cannot afford to hire a property manager yet, using a property management system is the best practical way to reduce your monthly overheads. The software is beneficial in tracking three main aspects: tenant details, maintenance costs, and accounting records.
You can use the software to consolidate and streamline rental processes from tenant applications to lease expiry or termination. The system also allows you to schedule maintenance to stay ahead of any unforeseen occurrences. Lastly, the system has accounting software functionality that keeps track of rent payments and delays.
The benefits of using property management systems are endless. However, all in all, these benefits all do one of the two things. They either save you money or time; sometimes, they save you both.
Invest In Preventative Maintenance
Many landlords make the big mistake of waiting for a problem to arise before they fix it. This can be quite costly as the damage will depend on how long the problem has existed.
Therefore landlords must schedule inspections, and this will assist them in uncovering underlying issues that may become bigger and more expensive to fix in the near future. This is called preventative maintenance. Preventative maintenance is essentially being proactive instead of reactive to issues.
Scheduling tasks like testing smoke detectors, checking fire hydrant expiry dates, cleaning the gutters, and checking for gas or water leakages are proactive ways of dealing with rental properties.
The primary benefit of being proactive with property management duties is that it gives landlords enough time to plan for repairs or replacements, thus saving them time and money.
Although leasing rental property is an easy way to make additional income, it is one of the most demanding. Landlords need to be easily accessible and quick to respond to their tenants’ needs.
However, landlords with full-time jobs or running other businesses cannot possibly handle the stress of property management. Thus hiring a property manager or using a property management system will significantly alleviate that pressure financially and time-wise.