To effectively maintain your Bozeman rental property and protect the condition of your investment, you need an efficient and effective process in place for your tenants to request maintenance. You don’t want your tenants to neglect letting you know that a repair is needed. If they ignore the small issues, those problems will only grow into larger, more complex, and ultimately more expensive repairs.

One of the benefits of working with a Bozeman property management company is that the entire maintenance process becomes the responsibility of experts. You don’t have to worry about late night phone calls or finding vendors.

If you’re managing on your own, there are a few things you need to have in place to ensure your maintenance process is working the way it should.

Share Your Contact Information for Emergencies

When there’s an emergency at the property, you need to know right away. Your tenants should have your emergency contact number or the contact information for the Bozeman property management company that’s protecting your home.

Make sure you and your tenants are on the same page regarding what constitutes an emergency. If there’s a leak or a flood, that’s an emergency. Fires are certainly emergencies. If a storm or some other catastrophe causes a tree to crash through the roof or a rock flies through a window, those are emergencies that require an immediate response. A loss of heat in the winter is also an emergency.

Create a Written System for Non-Urgent Maintenance Issues

While emergencies should be reported with a phone call, routine maintenance requests are better made in writing. You’ll still want to respond with a sense of urgency, but when the request is in writing, you’ll also have a documented record of when the issue was reported and what you did to respond to it. When you have something in writing, you can track the entire process and make notes about costs, timeframes, and follow up.

Ask your tenants to request non-emergency repairs through text message or email. If you’re working with a Bozeman property management company, they should have an online platform where tenants can make maintenance requests electronically and even upload pictures of the problem.

Be Responsive with Maintenance

Having a consistent process in place for maintenance requests is important. You need to be available, accessible, and responsive. This will help you and your tenants know exactly what to expect in terms of how those maintenance issues will be handled.

Your first step might be to diagnose the problem with the tenant; simple things can often be fixed without sending over a contractor. If it’s a complex problem, you’ll need to know which professional vendor to send. You need a maintenance budget. Make sure you have a reserve or an emergency fund to cover routine issues as well as major maintenance projects.

Maintenance can be complicated, and we’re here to help. Contact us at Peak Property Management for help in handling rental property repairs or for any Bozeman property management questions.