Real Estate Investor · Amherst, NH · Member since 2015 · 59 posts · 14 votes
How do property managers prioritize their workload? For example, if they had 2 clients with 1 building each and got a maintenance call from tenants from both buildings at the same time, whose do they address first? Thanks!!
I would coordinate my technicians based on priority level of the maintenance concern submitted. If one tenant called about a closet slider off the track and another called about a leaking faucet, the leak would be addressed first, followed by the closet.
On a basic level, if you use a two level priority system, such as A = Emergency and B = Common, you simply determine which priority level it fits into and then enact the "first-come-first-serve" method to have the issues remedied. If both maintenance requests are received within a similar time-frame, just communicate to the tenant that a technician is scheduled to perform another work order, but will be over after to address their concern. Tenants typically just want to be assured they are "on the schedule" even if they aren't first. Although one tenant may believe their clogged disposal is more important than another's loose fridge handle, neither is an emergency and should be addressed in the order for which it was received.
@Monica Kovalsky I agree with @Wade Williams in the sense the maintenance should be handled based on the severity of the request. I also believe that all property managers should have numerous vendors for each project/request that might come up. It is unlikely that both maintenance request calls you receive at the same time are for the same issue so you should be able to send out the respective vendor for each job. If the requests happened to be for the same issue, i.e., plumbing, a property manager should have at least two plumbing contacts or use a plumbing contractor with a crew to where they could send out multiple plumbers to handle the multiple requests.