Being a property owner comes with many responsibilities, but the biggest task that landlords face is the physical maintenance of their rental properties. Hiring a property manager could make fulfilling this absolutely necessary responsibility a piece of cake. But if you’re brave enough to attempt doing all of your property maintenance yourself, here are some questions to think about before you start your big projects.
Do You Have The Resources to Complete the Project?
If you’re generally a handy person, and you have a garage full of tools and machinery geared towards lawn care, gutter care, tree and bush maintenance, pipe care, etc, then you’re probably in a good starting position to do the property maintenance on your own.
It can take years of acquiring items here and there to build a repertoire of necessary tools to complete all of the routine maintenance that rental properties require.
Not everyone has immediate access to these things, and buying them all at one time will be incredibly expensive. We’re talking professional landscaping type prices to purchase all of the tools and equipment needed to tackle not only routine property maintenance, but also emergency maintenance when necessary.
Do You Have the Financial Resources to Afford the Supplies Needed for Consistent Property Maintenance?
As we mentioned above, the cost of acquiring the tools and equipment necessary to maintain your properties can get incredibly expensive if you don’t already have most of it on hand.
But the cost of usable building materials also needs to be considered. Even if you have all of the equipment, you’ll need to invest in things like nails, screws, lumber, mulch, bug spray, drain cleaner, etc.
Once you have your materials and your equipment, you’re going to need the appropriate vehicles to transport the equipment. For lawn equipment, you’d need a trailer and a vehicle large enough to haul the trailer. For remulching and other landscaping, you’d need a small dump truck or something similar to haul the mulch and the shovels and racks to finish the landscaping.
Obviously, you don’t have to own the transportation vehicles, they can be rented or a professional landscaper could be hired. But for the cost of a landscaping company, you could probably just hire a property management company, which is all inclusive property care, year round, with professionals in all areas of maintenance, for one package price.
Do You Know What to Look For to Prevent Maintenance Issues in the Future?
Sometimes routine property maintenance isn’t about fixing what’s broken or cleaning what’s dirty; it’s about identifying areas for preventative maintenance. Can you, as a landlord, keep a regular routine of making sure your properties are prepared in a way that allows them to continue to be in good repair, throughout the year, by knowing what seasonal maintenance to focus on so that larger issues don’t occur?
For example, if your property is in a state that has tall trees that could account for gutter clogs in the fall, can you be sure to keep those trees trimmed and leaves removed from the roof in a consistent manner, before the gutters actually become clogged?
If you have one or two small properties that you manage on your own, following through with these seasonal or yearly maintenance routines may not be all that time consuming. But if you have many properties, over a wide area, with varying amounts of attention needed, going it alone would turn into a full time job. It could also turn into a huge money pit if you’re paying different contractors to tackle the areas of maintenance that you, yourself, are not confident to handle.
Having one property management company to oversee all of your properties, or all of their needs, would consolidate the costs of each contractor into one payment for you, as the property owner.
Do You Understand Building Codes in Your County and State?
If your property needs significant repair, or if it needs renovations, you will need to be aware of the building codes for the county and state your property is in. Most likely, your property is already up to code, but things can get tricky if it’s not, or if something you change on the property doesn’t meet the code requirements.
These codes are set in place to ensure the safety and the standardization of properties, so that maintenance is easier and also safe for the maintenance workers as well as the tenants in the property. This
website has an extensive list of the building codes for everything inside and outside of property in Mobile.
This is one of the most important aspects of keeping your properties modernized and safe. So if you feel like it would be too much of a struggle or headache to understand the compliance with these codes, we recommend a property manager who can do all of that for you.
Can You Provide the Best Overall Care for Your Rental Property and the Tenants Living There?
The final question we pose to you, as a landlord and caretaker, is: can you definitely, beyond the shadow of a doubt, provide the best overall care for your rental properties and the tenants living in them?
If your answer is yes, then please, by all means, continue caring for and maintaining your properties. But if you hesitated as you read this question, we ask you to consider your own mental health as well as the wellbeing of your tenants when it comes to keeping the properties they’re renting safe and comfortable.
The Bottom Line
Making property maintenance a full time job for yourself can be especially rewarding, but if you’re someone who owns properties on the side of having another full time day job, your best bet will be to invest in a property management company, like
Revialize Realty, to make sure all of these needs are met for both you and your tenants.
While it’s admirable to try and do everything yourself, it may come at the expense of your personal time, your mental energy, the financial gain you make on your properties, and even at the expense of your tenants living conditions. We urge you to strongly consider how well you can navigate the world of property maintenance before leaping into DIY projects.
Please stay tuned for more content like this, coming your way twice a week, right here on our
blog!
