I’m a small-time landlord and software engineer, and one of my biggest headaches has been keeping track of tenant maintenance requests (random texts, calls, and emails — total chaos).
I ended up building a simple system for myself to make things easier, and I’ve been thinking about what features would make it truly useful for small landlords.
Curious — how do you currently handle maintenance requests?
Just texts/calls?
Spreadsheets?
Property management software?
And if you could wave a magic wand and create the perfect setup for this, what features would it absolutely need?
Would love to hear how others are approaching this.
Management software such as door loop is available at no charge
Yeah, I’ve seen DoorLoop… definitely solid for an all-in-one platform.
My challenge was that I wanted something much lighter for just maintenance tracking, something tenants could use super easily on their phones and with reporting that made tax season painless
Out of curiosity, if you’ve used DoorLoop (or similar software), what’s your favorite feature? And is there anything you wish those platforms did better?
I’m trying to get a sense of what small landlords actually find most valuable in these tools.
@Edwin Valerio better integration with quickboiks or the ability to replace it. The value of collecting rent even via credit card is invaluable. For marketing you can push your available apartments to dozens of sites with a push of a button
We use Breezeway. It has a feature that's bundled with their version of a digital guidebook, where guests can submit maintenance requests. We're not fully utilizing the app yet, but I believe it's robust enough for us as we grow.
I use Shuk for my rental properties and it's been great. It's a platform focused on landlords who self-manage and is low cost (only $5/month per unit). Some cool benefits include expense tracking (per property), the Lease Indiciation Tool (helps predict the likelihood of a tenant renewing the lease giving you the chance to renew early and/or increase monthly rent if you know someone wants to renew), Tenant Communication (via their app), Maintenance Requests, Tenant Payments, and more. It's been awesome and the founder of the company based has helped me when I've had questions on things regarding the platform. Go check it out! It's been great. You can just google "Shuk Rentals" and it's one of the first things to pop up.
Love this question, we totally get the chaos you’re talking about. We actually use ClickUp to manage everything from maintenance requests to reminders and ongoing task tracking. It's been a game changer for keeping things organized across multiple properties.
On top of that, we also use property management software that lets us communicate directly with our cleaners, handymen, and vendors in one place, no more chasing texts or emails. It keeps everything streamlined and makes delegation super easy.
If you’re curious about how we set it up or want to dive into what’s worked for us, I’d be happy to chat more!
The status that quietly causes the most rework is "needs more info." A request lands with no photo or unit detail, and you burn a day chasing it before a vendor can even be assigned. For folks who've run the spreadsheet route a while: which fields did you end up treating as non-negotiable before a request counts as "real"?