With any rental the time arrives where you will need the help and expertise of a vendor. Giving access to your property is necessary when a tenant moves out. You need to schedule multiple trades, perform inspections, and conduct repairs.
Sometimes access to a property is needed for a small challenge such as a backed up toilet. The most important task with a backed up toilet is to get the plumber access. A knee jerk reaction might be “can’t the tenant just let them in?” It can be difficult to align the schedule of a vendor and the tenant. Consider the following options when you need to give access to your rental.
Meeting Vendors at the Rental
When you have more detailed work that needs to be done at your rental, especially after a tenant leaves, meeting vendors at your rental is a great approach. In person meetings allow a property owner to review detailed written instructions with the vendor for complete alignment.
When a tenant moves out you might need carpet, paint, and even light repairs. To optimize your time we recommend scheduling all of the required vendors within a couple hour window (i.e. from 10am-12noon). Let the vendors know it is a rental and that you will have a few trades so they understand the additional importance of timing.
Situations requiring multiple trades and even multiple quotes are one of the scenarios where people most appreciate a property management company. Property management companies take care of all of the heavy lifting, organization, and quoting.
Keyless Door Lock
If you have taken the strategy of making your rental a
smart rental
then you might have implemented a
keyless door lock. A keyless door lock is most typical in short term rentals (i.e. vacation rentals generally made available via AirBnB or Vrbo). These systems allow you to set multiple codes and would be used on a daily basis by your tenant. They are more expensive than a traditional door lock system (often 50% more or even 2x more expensive) and they do require WiFi. The aspect of needing WiFi for a door lock can be challenging as for most long term rentals the WiFi aspect falls under responsibility of the tenant.
Keyless Hide a Key System
One of the most popular methods of providing access is the “hide a key” system. While many years ago this might have meant putting a key under a rock or a doormat; now there are a few options that allow you to offer a key to multiple vendors in a much more secure manner. MasterLock has a Vault system which allows you to program codes for different people to understand who was the last person to access the key. Since this system can be purchased for $60-$130 and doesn’t even require WiFi it is a great option to allow vendors to access your rental in those key moments.
Making your rental available to vendors to ensure work gets done doesn’t have to be a challenge when you use the options above. When you want to find out more about how we help our owners we invite you to call us today (562) 888-0247 and we can share more about our services. If you want to have a quick check to see how much your property could fetch in rent we invite you to fill out our
Free Rental Analysis
where we perform a comprehensive comparison to share your rental stacks up to the competition
