Medford Property Management Best Practices to Maximizing Your Property Preservation
Owning a rental property can be a time consuming and overwhelming experience. While it should be rewarding and completely stress free, we all know that it is not. The purpose of this article is to give you some simple land lording and property management tips that can help preserve the value of your property without having to invest large capital sums of money into your property. Simple things you can do along the way, on a routine basis, helps preserves the property value.
1. Routine Inspections.
This is definitely one of the best things you can do. Keep a very tight pulse on the property and what is going on. You can see one of our last posts where we really gig into property management inspections best practices.
2. Maintain a strong relationship with your Tenant.
When we say strong, we definitely don’t mean to be friends or anything like that. What we are referring to is to keep a close knit, open line of commutation between your team and the Tenants. Many landlords and Property Management Medford Oregon companies make the mistake of not treating their Tenants with the customer service they they deserve. The effect of not having that trust built between your Tenants and yourself is they they will not let you know when either a: something bad has happened in their life and they cannot pay the rent or b: small things break in your rental that if fixed now, could save you money versus allowing more damage to occur down the road.
One of the best ways to strengthen that relationship is to do small things, like send them a birthday card (maybe even a small gift), call them back within 1 day and respond to their maintenance requests in a very timely manner as well. We at Asurent Property Management have 2 core commitments for our Tenants that has allowed us to develop great relationships and trust, those 2 things are the 1 day callback commitment and a 3 day maintenance request response. Staying consistent to these two things alone will allow you to build great trust with your property tenants.
3. Water leaks
Water leaks are the biggest culprit for being a small issue at first, that not handled, will progressively get worst and develop into a far worse problem. This relates back to the importance of inspections and ensuring that you routinely inspect the property, as well as maintaining that strong relationship so your Tenants actually calls you when there is a small leak in a fixture.
4. Air Filters
There is one thing that you can rest assured – most of your Tenants will not be replacing their air filters when they should What does this cause? Your HVAC (heating ventilation & air conditioning) systems have to work that much harder to get the temperature of the house where the Tenant is asking for it to be set at. This is because when the air filter accumulates dirt and debris, the differential pressure across the filter slowly increases. This places hardship on your HVAC equipment and the motors have to run harder, longer. That decreases the lifetime expectancy of the equipment and can end up costing you, the Owner, greatly.
Most HVAC systems have a life expectancy of 15 years. Those that are cared for poorly, will end up requiring replacement proportionately earlier. These are great expenses that you as the Owner can help ensure are not needed until expected, once every 15 years. Everyone puts it in their lease that the Tenant is responsible for replacing their filters every 3 months, however what do most landlords do to ensure that happens as they expect? Nothing.
I would highly suggest performing an internal inspection every 6 months and bring a new filter with you when you perform the inspection. You replace it yourself. Then you know it is done. Or at least check it and ask. If they are doing a good job of replacing, then you don’t have to. But ensure that you look, “trust but verify.”
The last thing is to ensure that all batteries are fresh and all smoke and carbon dioxide alarms have been tested. Doing these small things for the Tenant is not a big deal, however it does go a long way. One less thing for them to worry about, while you protect your medford rental investment and further continue to build your relationship with them.
Property Preservation seems easy, but when you allow other people to occupy your property, it is somewhat out of your control. The items in this post can help you mitigate any potential for your Tenants to not conform to your requests as a landlord.
If we can be of any assistance with your property, feel free to call Asurent at 541 816-4140.