Simplifying Property Inspections and Maintenance for Teams

When you own multiple properties in need of consistent and comprehensive maintenance, you’ll want to make the entire process easier on your team. Keeping up with communication and scheduling is a start, but everything after that can take up a lot of time and resources. Luckily, there are many things that you can do to ensure that everything moves along smoothly.

In this blog post, we’ll go over how to make inspections and maintenance easier on your maintenance staff, along with how to build a facility management system.

What Are Apartment Inspections?

You’re probably familiar with this process already, but if you’re a first-time property owner or landlord looking to get your first tenant, think of how a potential renter will use your home. If you gave it to them in good condition, you’ll expect to get it back in the same manner. However, whether they used your home properly and are giving it back to you in good condition won’t always be easy to tell.

As such, before a tenant vacates your home or signs a lease with you, an apartment inspection is crucial and may help to minimize any disputes regarding the condition of your property. At the same time, it will provide your future tenants with a more pleasant and safer place to live. Moreover, doing an apartment inspection will ensure that everything is fixed and kept up to your standards and will prevent shady tenants from making wrongful claims against your property.

To help your team better handle every inspection and maintenance they perform within your properties, here is a quick breakdown of the rooms in need of your attention. Have a member of your team focus on each section of your property separately to ensure that it gets a comprehensive sweep, including:

• The bedroom
• The bathroom
• The kitchen
• The utility closet
• Spaces around the apartment
• The actual building

What Kind of Inspections Should You Do?

While most property managers will only perform inspections upon their tenants moving out, it’s important to do two other kinds of inspections around your property which are:

• Moving-in inspections: Provides an easy way of comparing conditions when a tenant moves in compared to when they move out. Once a tenant countersigns it, you will have fewer problems down the road.
• Preventative inspections: Provides ongoing inspections which can take place quarterly or yearly depending on your preferences, which include common areas and the unit itself.

Having regular preventative inspections will allow you to detect issues before they become bigger and create long-term damage. Your tenants will also be more likely to call you about issues if they know that an inspection is coming up.

Making Onsite Inspections Easier

There are a few simple things that you can implement for your maintenance teams today that can change the way they work right away.

Switch Over to Digital

One of the leading issues that maintenance teams struggle with is having no access to WiFi. If their job involves sending a lot of pictures after performing the inspection, not having access to WiFi or having the right devices will certainly hinder them from doing their jobs. On the other hand, your staff may use their own data and devices, but this isn’t an ideal solution.

To help them, make sure to create or use an existing system dedicated to online maintenance for apartments or property management applications. These can help them stay online without having a hard time with connectivity problems as they document the condition and state of your property. As such, consider replacing manual processes that use up too much paper — you won’t just get an automated and digital solution but you’ll be saving the environment too.

Get Rid of Pen and Paper

As mentioned, pen-and-paper solutions are a thing of the past and will mostly lead to errors such as data loss and double entries. It’s also hard to retain talented and dedicated staff these days, so it’s important that you support them by providing the correct tools. When they conduct their inspections, your staff should be able to quickly create work orders, flag trouble areas, and resolve issues using a dedicated property management app or software.

These tools will allow them to add notes, attach photos, and provide you with all the information you need regarding any property from one platform so they can execute their job flawlessly. Setting up these digital tools will help your team work smarter, not harder, and can improve the communication between your team members by having everything within view in one channel.

Create Your Own Inspection Template

You can set your team up for success by providing them with detailed inspection templates that can help clarify what your staff needs to inspect. Once you detect an issue, you can easily flag it and create a work order that can be shared with your team. A digital template will work particularly well in this case and can be used for any room on your property.

Using an inspection template will also let you shift from being reactive to being proactive, which means you’ll be able to take steps ahead of an issue before it becomes a bigger problem. As a result, you’ll be able to save your team time, keep your tenants happy, and safeguard your property’s profits. Furthermore, the effective use of inspection templates can help you separate ones that were internally created from those that have been requested by a resident, helping you to better prioritize jobs.

Build a System That Supports Preventative Maintenance

Don’t wait for something to break before you attempt to fix it — this will only cause frustration in your residents and will also be more costly for you. Performing regular inspections will ensure that your maintenance teams can target specific areas within your property in need of extra care before they become a huge headache. Your tenants will expect you to provide quick communication and to deal with all issues effectively — the key is to provide inspections proactively.

We all know that prevention is better than cure, and the same applies to performing regular maintenance and routine inspections. Being proactive doesn’t just benefit your residents, but will also provide plenty of advantages for your team and your business. Being one step ahead when it comes to inspections means that you’ll have the budget for repairs, can reduce long-term damage, and allows you to address issues in your supply chain sooner rather than later, which means you’ll earn more from your property.

Conclusion

If you’re struggling to keep up with your inspections or are looking to create a more dynamic way to track your maintenance needs, the suggestions above can help to make these processes easier. Our team at ExactEstate offers property management software designed to help you run your business and properties with ease, so be sure to request a demo with us. We’re dedicated to helping your team grow and thrive in the heavily competitive world of real estate — visit our website today to learn more.