A responsive and effective maintenance plan allows you to earn more and spend less on your Northern Virginia investment property. While a lot of landlords shy away from spending any money at all on maintenance, we know that those necessary repairs and recommended improvements are investments in your property. When you’re willing to prioritize maintenance, you’re positioning yourself to increase your earnings in both the short term and the long term.
Good maintenance practices allow you to retain your residents better. You’ll save money on turnover and vacancy costs.
Taking care of your property also protects the condition and the value of your rental home. No one wants to rent a property that’s deteriorating. When you keep up with preventative maintenance, curb appeal, and minor upgrades, you can continue to raise the rent on your investment, attract qualified tenants, and enjoy a productive and profitable tenancy.
Here are some of the insights we can provide as experienced Northern Virginia property managers on effective maintenance strategies.
Avoid the Expense of Maintenance Emergencies
Flooding basements in the middle of the night. Sewer backups over long weekends. A non-working oven on Christmas morning. Emergencies never seem to happen at convenient times. When something terrible happens, your tenants get anxious. Your vendors need to be ready. You need to be available.
Emergency repairs are never easy. We recommend avoiding the drama and the stress (and the expense) of emergency maintenance whenever possible. The best way to do that is by making routine repairs as soon as they’re needed. Preventative maintenance helps, too, and routine inspections.
By their very nature, emergency repairs are unexpected. You can also be sure that they’ll require an immediate response. Unexpected things will happen from time to time, and you’ll have to be prepared to manage the crisis efficiently and with minimal damage to your property.
When you pay close attention to routine maintenance inspections and services, you’ll find these emergencies are rare. Effective maintenance means recognizing the danger signs before they turn into emergencies. Checking sinks, tubs, and toilets for minor leaks, for example, can prevent a major plumbing disaster.
Take care of minor repair problems right away. By responding as soon as they’re reported, you can avoid those expensive emergency repair calls.
Protecting the Condition of Your Investment with Preventative Maintenance
There isn’t a profitable Northern Virginia investment property that isn’t well-maintained.
This is a requirement to succeed as a real estate investor; you have to keep up with the repairs at your property.
Prioritize routine maintenance and preventative services so you don’t have to replace your roof when it starts leaking. If you have an HVAC technician check your heating and cooling units, you’ll have fewer calls from tenants that the air conditioning has stopped working or the heat isn’t turning on. You won’t have to replace your water heater within years of installing it.
Preventative maintenance works. And, it saves you money.
Not only does preventative maintenance preserve the condition and value of your property, it also lets you know when things need to be updated or upgraded. If we’re called to fix an appliance three times in one year, for example, we’ll likely recommend that instead of repairing it, you simply replace that appliance for a newer, more reliable model.
Northern Virginia tenants will be willing to pay more for a home that is modern, updated, and in good condition. You’ll stand out in the market, especially when competing properties are showing signs of age, deterioration, and wear and tear.
Deferred and Unreported Maintenance is Expensive
Make sure you’re not putting things off. Avoiding repairs is not an effective strategy, and it will only cost you money and time. Deferred maintenance is expensive, and you can’t let it jeopardize the safety and the profitability of your investment. Nothing gets easier or less expensive with time. If you ignore a needed repair and don’t fix it right away, it’s only going to get worse.
If you want effective and money-saving strategies to help you earn more on your investment, you absolutely must keep up with the routine maintenance issues and take care of everything as soon as you learn of it, no matter how minor.
Take the time to educate your tenants on the maintenance process they need to follow and the importance of reporting maintenance issues to you right away. Unreported issues are just as dangerous as deferred issues. You don’t want to walk into the property during a routine inspection and find that one of the windows won’t close properly or water has been pooling behind a toilet. You want to know these things as soon as they happen.
Gather the Best Network of Vendors to Your Property
Vendors and contractors are absolutely necessary. Service providers such as landscapers, cleaners, and painters will ensure you’re able to maintain and turnover your property whenever you need them.
It’s become harder to find the professionals that you need. For starters, even basic services are more expensive. And, these vendors are busier than they’ve been. There’s a huge demand for their skills, and there’s also a labor shortage in most of their professionals. You might find yourself waiting days or even weeks for help.
This can be frustrating, and it’s an excellent reason to work with professional property managers in Northern Virginia. We can leverage the relationships we already have in place with local vendors and contractors. These professionals like working with us because we provide steady work, and we make things as easy as possible for them. You won’t have to worry about finding the right plumber or roofer when you work with us. We already have a great network, and we’re even able to negotiate their best rates.
If you’re managing your home on your own, be proactive about establishing these relationships. When a plumber or a roofer knows who you are, you’ll have a better chance of getting them out to you as soon as possible.
When the idea of responding right away to maintenance issues feels like it won’t be possible, you need to talk to a local property manager. Good maintenance leads to a good investment experience. We can help. Please don’t hesitate to contact us at Comfort Property Management. We lease, manage, and maintain investment properties throughout Northern Virginia, in Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, McLean, Ashburn, Sterling, Springfield, Reston, Chantilly, Manassas, Centreville, and Herndon.
