Home maintenance is a crucial part of keeping our home clean and safe. As a landlord, you have rental property maintenance duties to perform regularly to keep your rental property running smoothly and at the same time provide habitable place for your tenants. Even so, no matter how essential these duties are, these are often forgotten, delayed or ignored.
Caring for your rental investment is not something you can leave to your tenant. It’s a landlord’s duty to repair and provide a safe living space, which means the heating, cooling, plumbing, and electrical systems should be working properly.
Essential rental property maintenance tasks can either be emergency or non-emergency situations. Emergency situations are those that when ignored can result to making the rental property unlivable. It could be a broken furnace during the winter. Non-emergency situations are those that don’t threaten the safety of your tenants like a running toilet.
Some landlords hire a property manager to carry out property inspections to know if there are any maintenance issues to lookout for. On behalf of the landlord, the property managers deal with any repairs and maintenance requests. By doing so, requests of tenants will be promptly responded and scheduled.
So, what are the essential home maintenance jobs that a landlord (and tenant) should never ignore?
Essential Rental Property Maintenance Task Checklist
- Keep the air filter, vents and ducts of the HVAC system clean, and change the air filter regularly.
- Inspect the dryer’s exhaust hose routinely and clean out the lint and dirt.
- Clean out refrigerator coils once or twice a year
- Check the state of your hood filter at least once a year and replace the filter to get rid of grease and grime.
- Clean your bathroom exhaust fan once a month.
- Check for high water pressure and don’t forget to replace old pressure-reducing valves.
- Test smoke and carbon monoxide detectors regularly to make sure they’re in working order.
- Check and clean window weep holes and window wells.
- Drain sediment from your water heater once a year.
- Check garage door balance and lube garage door springs.
- Test smoke and carbon monoxide detectors regularly to make sure they’re in working order.
- Clean all the siding on our house with pressure washers.
- Check gutters every few months and clean them twice a year.
Why Home Maintenance Is Important
- Maintains and improves property safety
- Saves you money through preventative maintenance
- Reduces energy consumption
- Adds value to your home
- Keeps your rental property running efficiently
- Reduces your stress
The hallmark of a successful landlord is keeping ones rental properties in top shape. We hope that the handy list above has reminded you to check your own rental property maintenance to-do list. And with the help of a property management company, you’re sure to keep your rental property running efficiently. At Apogee Properties, we work to keep your rental property safe, cost-effective, and valuable. If you are interested in property management services such as property listing, tenant screening, and maintenance, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Working with Apogee Properties
Apogee Properties is Houston’s leading real estate management company. We work and live in Houston and our property managers are local. We’ve been in business for more than a decade providing comprehensive property management services in the Houston region ranging from a studio condo to a multi-family million dollar estate.
Apogee looks forward to hearing from you and sharing what we can offer to your Houston property. Contact us today to learn more!
