Maintenance Items, Maintenance Record, and Property Expenses

An inevitable aspect of operating your Long Beach rental is dealing with maintenance. While this can be a frustrating experience for you, it’s also very bothersome for your tenants and poses a potential safety hazard. Not to mention, tenants who are unhappy with the condition of your rental may not opt to renew their lease and even negatively impact your local reputation. 

The best way to avoid these possible issues is by staying on top of key aspects of your property to minimize potential headaches. Although it’s impossible to predict every maintenance problem, completing consistent inspections throughout your property and making minor adjustments can have a major impact on property longevity and resident contentedness. Here are the best tips and tricks for keeping a low-maintenance rental. 

Routine Check-Ups of Essential Systems

Routine check-ups are simple and easy actions that you only need to complete a few times a year but can save you from disaster. Along with common repairs, you should also complete these routine check-ups after tenants move out. 

One of the most important items to check on frequently are smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. First off, you need to ensure that your rental meets the California Building Code that requires there must be one smoke alarm on every floor of non-sleeping rooms, one smoke alarm in every sleeping room, and one smoke alarm in every hallway that leads to a sleeping room. Then, you also need to replace all carbon monoxide detector batteries biannually. Similarly, you usually need to replace all smoke detector batteries annually, but some smoke detectors come with batteries that last for ten years. Understanding which kind you have is imperative to know when replacements are necessary. By doing this, you avoid any false chirping, which is both annoying and might falsely scare tenants into thinking there is a threat. Additionally, this gives you time to check on all the detectors and see if they are malfunctioning or broken. 

It’s also important that you get your rental’s HVAC system serviced and cleaned by a professional once a year. Not only does this improve longevity, but it also prevents larger maintenance issues from coming up that would greatly inconvenience your tenants, especially during a heat wave or cold spell. 

Though it’s good to check on appliances (especially washers, dryers, stoves, ovens, and refrigerators) to confirm that they’re working properly, everything has a shelf life and sometimes repairs or replacements are not always preventable. 

How Expenses Can Help Your Rental Property

When it comes to these necessary repairs or replacements, remember that they can actually have a positive impact by improving property value and increasing interest for future tenants. 

This is not only true for buying new appliances, but also for taking on much larger projects such as re-roofing, paving a new driveway, replacing flooring, or repainting. Yes, these projects may not be necessary, yet they can be incredibly valuable in boosting curb appeal. 

Keeping Record of Maintenance to Your Long Beach Rental

Whenever you complete any of these tasks, write them down in a Maintenance Log so that you don’t forget to do them or accidentally do them multiple times. Additionally, keep a record of who completed jobs like HVAC system inspections or renovation projects for future reference. Maintaining these long-term connections can make scheduling projects or calling in emergency repairs much easier. Instead of hiring someone new and unfamiliar, you can use a trustworthy individual who you and your renters are comfortable and happy with. 

This documentation is also incredibly helpful during tax time. Instead of aimlessly searching for receipts and hopelessly trying to remember dates off the top of your head, you can have all of your records in one place ready at your convenience. 

Following these action items will ultimately make your life much easier and help you avoid various maintenance problems that would otherwise take up lots of your time, energy, and money. That said, even the most efficient and careful landlord can’t dodge everything. There will always be unexpected crises that creep up on you and your tenants; however, being prepared for them ahead of time will make them much easier to handle, especially if you have a reliable property management company by your side. To learn more, we invite you to call us today at (562) 888-0247 or you can fill out our Owner Application online.