Maintenance is inevitable in the property management industry and every company takes a different approach to managing areas that fall within the maintenance realm. All these elements that demand attention, require different skill sets to be managed effectively, which often results in partnering with contractors to do the job. However, contractors can be expensive and run up costs.
Bringing your maintenance team in house gives property management companies the opportunity to expand your revenue source instead of paying to outside contractors. Realize the potential profitability of monetizing your property maintenance.
Scouting Vendors
When choosing contractors, you typically would have to vet them and their employees to ensure they meet the standards of service you want to offer your customers and to be certain they will be both safe and effective while on-site. This can be a long and tiring process when acquiring a separate vendor for every potential maintenance need including, but not limited to, HVAC, plumbing, carpentry, and landscaping. If your maintenance team is an extended service arm of your organization, you can ensure the team will be effective and safe in its role, eliminating the need to evaluate vendors.
Response Time
When you have an in-house maintenance team, you’ll be able to respond as quickly as possible to owner and tenant requests because the team will answer to only you. Outside maintenance companies are split between the multiple customers they’re working with, which means labor on your site won’t be guaranteed to be timely. Whereas with your own maintenance staff, they will basically be able to respond to your beck and call, facilitating prompt and reliable service.
Preventative
With a team available to you at all times you can control with greater flexibility how maintenance is being scheduled and organized so workorders that may not seem important or immediate don’t slip through the cracks.
Emergencies On-Site
With all the potential accidents or natural disasters possible that can damage properties internally or externally, a reliable maintenance team can help effectively execute urgent or emergency maintenance instantaneously. This is especially useful following natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or wildfires, where maintenance vendors would be spread more thinly than usual.
Collaboration
When your maintenance team is a part of your property management team, there is more space for collaboration and innovation as a unit. An enhanced collaborative relationship can help operate in-sync. Both field services and property managers can leverage the same software for reporting and analysis to effectively communicate, track trends, or even develop action plans with expertise from both ends. When your team can’t connect on insights and creativity because they are separate entities there is less room to grow and deliver the most effective and efficient service.
Profitability
Monetizing your field services gives you the ability to execute maintenance and repairs without paying labor mark-ups to other companies, allowing you to reduce expenses to your business. You can leverage reports to effectively purchase inventory and help boost productivity while charging back services to customers. This means that property managers can add a steady additional revenue stream with minimal additional operating costs.
