You know the day-to-day errands as a property manager – looking after your building, the endless paperwork, keeping your tenants happy, and looking for ways to reduce costs. However, the difference between a good property manager and a great one is the planning, which goes into these tasks.

In today’s blog, we’re offering you some helpful tips to create a proactive action plan to help you prevent wear and tear in your building, keep on top of paperwork, make sure your tenants are happy, and even reduce costs. Let’s take a look:

Looking After Your Building

With today’s busy lives, it’s only to be expected that you wait for a call out to a problem in your building. Water damage, mold, drainage problems – you name it, we’ve all seen it as property managers. The problem with this approach is that often, by the time you receive that call to say there has been a problem, it is too late to mitigate the damage. As a result, you end up spending out of pocket for repairs that could have been a lot cheaper to remedy.

By looking after the accounts, you can provide better value for money service. The best way to look after your accounts is to look after everything else. We suggest a proactive inspection plan, which allows you to identify any minor faults that could turn into something much more significant if left unserviced.

What can I do?

We call it a Six-Month Scan. Program a visit every six months, whether you’ve received a phone call about a problem or not. For this assessment, you need to create a checklist of things that could potentially cause a more profound problem over time.

Depending on the type of property you manage, some of those points to check over could be:

1. Old, rotting tile grout which water may filter through, creating a damp or mold problem.
2. Loose bathroom and kitchen fixtures – again, an excellent way for water to go into places it shouldn’t
3. Check for working fire alarms and Carbon Monoxide alarms
4. Check and clean drains thoroughly
5. Check ventilation or HVAC
6. Document your checks with video footage and paperwork as records so that you can see the progress over time.

It seems like a hassle when nobody is alerting you to any problems, but it helps maintain your building over time. It can significantly reduce costs if disaster can be averted. Your tenants will also be happier that they are living/working in a safe environment, with a thorough manager, which means better working relationships and more willingness from your tenants to pay rent and fees, if that is how your commercial property works.

Of course, there are always things that come up that you can’t prevent. That’s the nature of the job as a property manager. A regular, thorough assessment, though, can help reduce the number of call-outs over time and allows you to offer a safer, more enjoyable experience for those using your building, leaving you time to get to those emergency call-outs as when they arise, with the impeccable service that you provide.