Maintaining Your Properties Efficiently and Effectively
What’s more difficult than finding the right property for your residential or commercial needs? It’s maintaining your property in pristine condition. While buying a real estate property involves a plethora of challenging tasks, maintaining is a different ball game altogether. Whether you intend to live on the property or put it up for rent, maintaining it is of the utmost importance.
Effective and timely maintenance helps minimize the overall repair costs in the long run. Also, it helps attract and retain high-paying tenants. From plumbing and deep cleaning to painting and electrical work – you need to take care of various aspects. It becomes even more crucial when you own and have to manage multiple properties.
Are you wondering where to get started with your property maintenance routine? Here are a few tips to help you through the process:
1. Prioritize Routine Inspection
Whether you own a residential property or are using it as a commercial space, it needs regular inspection. From the walls and ceiling to the kitchen sink and bathroom faucets – every aspect of your property needs a thorough inspection. Even if there are no apparent signs of damage, a routine inspection will help you find potential problems that might need repair in the future.
Make sure you inspect your property every few months. You can even hire a qualified property inspector for this purpose.
2. Outline a Maintenance Schedule
Several components of your property, such as the plumbing system or air conditioning, need regular inspection and maintenance. Likewise, you need to get the property painted every few years to ensure that it remains habitable. Also, essential to regularly check the gutters and get any vegetation removed. While individually these tasks may not seem like a lot, together they can be quite overwhelming.
That’s why it’s recommended that you create separate weekly, monthly, semi-annual, and annual maintenance routines. Break the maintenance process in small manageable tasks and space them out across all the routines to avoid feeling overburdened.
For instance, getting your doors and windows clean can be a part of your monthly maintenance routine. But major tasks such as landscaping your outdoor garden could be done semi-annually. Likewise, painting the exterior of your property can be included in the annual maintenance routine.
3. Use High-Quality Raw Materials
Using cheap and mediocre raw materials is one of the most common mistakes novice property owners make. While it might save you some money, for the time being, it’ll end up costing you a fortune in the long run. That’s why you should never skimp on the materials you use for your property. From electrical fixtures and bathroom fittings to the paint and furniture – make sure you only use premium materials.
4. Find the Right Professionals
Here’s the thing – maintaining a real estate property isn’t a one-person job. You need an army of qualified plumbers, electricians, cleaners, painters, carpenters, landscapers, and other skilled workers for various tasks. Hiring the wrong vendor can cause more damage to your property in the long run.
That’s why you need to carefully vet and choose reliable, and trustworthy vendors. Make sure you check their credential and customer reviews online before hiring a vendor. Also, you need to check whether they’re insured and have the required license for their work. While you’re at it, don’t forget to recruit a few full-time vendors who can assist you in case of any emergency repairs.
5. Consider Landscaping
Landscaping is a great way to make the exterior of your property look sophisticated and well-maintained. Also, it helps keep dangerous animals and wild plants at bay and is good for the environment. It can be particularly useful for attracting tenants. Make sure you hire a qualified and landscaper to look after your property.
6. Prioritize Electrical Work
Installing the right electrical system is one of the most crucial aspects of building a new property. While you can ignore a cracked window or a leaking faucet, it’s difficult to ignore faulty electrical connections. Apart from causing inconvenience, it could have potentially life-threatening consequences.
Nevertheless, physical properties have often had problems with previous electrical installations or outdated systems. Turning to an all-inclusive company like Vertechs Electric will give you peace of mind and reliability with both commercial and residential electrical work.
7. Get Expert Help from a Property Manager
If you own multiple properties, regularly inspecting and maintaining them can be cumbersome. You need to keep a track of all ongoing and upcoming repairs and monitor their progress. Or you can save yourself the hassle by recruiting a qualified and experienced property manager who’ll manage these tasks on your behalf. Plus, a skilled manager can help find the right tenants for your property and even negotiate payment terms with them.
Do you use any other techniques to maintain your property? Share your tips in the comments section below.