Dean & DeWitt Property Management Services: Maintenance

How does a property manager maintain my rental property?

Maintenance Headaches

Maintenance is one of the biggest headaches for investors and landlords, and there are a few things we do to help with those maintenance concerns.

Today, we’re sharing some professional St. Petersburg property management tips for managing your maintenance needs.

In-House Maintenance

We have our own in-house maintenance department.

This is important because there are often minor repairs that are needed at your property. If we go to an outside contractor every time a home needs a simple repair, it will cost a lot of money. So, by having our own well-trained staff of in-house maintenance technicians, we can fix those repairs quickly for a lot less.

Relationships with Outside Vendors

Even with an in-house maintenance team, we still need outside vendors to do specific work.
We maintain strong relationships with numerous contractors; roofers, electricians, plumbers, air conditioning technicians, and others. When something happens, we don’t want to rely on Google or the yellow pages to find a professional who can help. Having these relationships already established allows us to get better service and negotiate better rates. We have vetted these professionals, so we know their work and we’re sure we’ll get good service from them.

These relationships are important when inside people cannot take care of the job.

After Hours Emergency Calls

No one likes the calls that come in at 2:00 a.m. reporting that the roof is leaking or the air conditioning has gone out. Most landlords feel caught between wanting to keep their tenants happy and not wanting to pay extra for after-hours maintenance calls. We take care of answering these emergency calls 24/7.

No tenant will have to leave a voicemail or send a message. Answering the calls allows us to troubleshoot, and we can be sure it’s actually an emergency that needs to be handled right away. If a tenant calls because the air conditioning has gone out and it’s over 90 degrees, that’s a good example of an emergency.

But sometimes, what a tenant thinks is an emergency is something we can troubleshoot over the phone. This is an important part of saving our investors money. If you have any questions about how we would handle maintenance for your St. Petersburg home, or you would like to talk more about property management in St. Petersburg, please contact us at Dean & DeWitt Property Management.