Maintenance Request Online
I manage 40 units. They consist of single family homes, small multis and condos. I have tenants in class A, B, and C areas. Some of my tenants do not speak or read English. I use a property management program (Appfolio), Can I make it a hard rule that in order to submit a maintenance request, it must be online via the tenant portal? I don't want receive calls, emails or texts about maintenance request. It's hard to keep tabs on them that way. I just want every maintenance request to come via the tenant's portal. All my tenants have access to the tenant portal and pay via the portal.
You can certainly create whatever “hard rule” procedures you want but if a tenant calls, emails, sends a text message, or a pigeon with a note saying there is a leak, do you ignore or tell them you’ll take no action until they go submit a ticket? It is a great tool to have and it’ll help streamline your operations but if someone calls, I respond. In those cases, I’d go online and submit that same request “on their behalf”. Presumably they’ll receive progress updates from your portal, will see the value in it, and use it to submit the next one themselves. Nothing wrong with reminding / letting them know that you prefer online submissions with that initial phone/email/text/whatever report either. It’ll never be 100% though.
As a property manager we require all maintenance requests to be submitted online through their portal. We use AppFolio also. There is always someone that has a hard time with it but those people usually have someone here that speaks English or is has a relative that understands technology and can do it for them. We actually have a clause in our lease agreement that states you will be charged a $50.00 fee for submitting a maintenance request in verbally. We did that to try and steer tenants away from coming in to the office and taking up someone's time.
We have also started using a program Property Meld - makes it real easy for vendors and tenants to communicate. The maintenance software Property Meld works with AppFolio. Something to maybe look into... if it saves you time you spend dealing with maintenance issues.
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Quote from @Wendy Lavana:
I manage 40 units. They consist of single family homes, small multis and condos. I have tenants in class A, B, and C areas. Some of my tenants do not speak or read English. I use a property management program (Appfolio), Can I make it a hard rule that in order to submit a maintenance request, it must be online via the tenant portal? I don't want receive calls, emails or texts about maintenance request. It's hard to keep tabs on them that way. I just want every maintenance request to come via the tenant's portal. All my tenants have access to the tenant portal and pay via the portal.
Absolutely. I manage 400 rentals and we require all maintenance requests to be in writing, except for emergency calls. You own the property, you set the rules.
@Sergey A. Petrov Thanks for your reply. I imagine it will never be 100% but I want to present it to my tenants on Move in date as their only option and I wasn't sure I could do that legally.
@Erin Dreher Definitely going to check out Property Meld, Thanks for your reply!
@Nathan Gesner Thanks, good to know. I wasn't sure I could legally require all maintenance request to be via the tenant portal. I know they won't always follow the rules, but I'll probably get the majority of them to do it and that will alleviate the work. 400 units WOW! I'm working on my SOPs for the 40 units I manage, if you have any advice on webinars or education on creating SOPs for property management please let me know.
Quote from @Wendy Lavana:
@Nathan Gesner Thanks, good to know. I wasn't sure I could legally require all maintenance request to be via the tenant portal. I know they won't always follow the rules, but I'll probably get the majority of them to do it and that will alleviate the work. 400 units WOW! I'm working on my SOPs for the 40 units I manage, if you have any advice on webinars or education on creating SOPs for property management please let me know.
Just keep plugging away. I started off with everything in my head. As I started to add employees, I started building SOPs. I got behind and have never been able to catch up! I'm training my newest employee right now and that will make me fully staffed, so I can finally focus on getting everything written down.
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#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
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@Wendy Lavana many PMC's have this requirement.
What you'll find is that it's also an effective screening method to put an end to silly maintenance requests.
Of course, as pointed out above, you'll have to accept a SMALL amount of maintenance issues (water leaks) potentially becoming bigger problems. You should be doing Annual Interior Evaluations to catch these.
