Property maintenance is the process of ensuring buildings and their immediate environments are in optimum condition. It includes maintenance activities such as safety checks, cleaning, rodent control, garbage disposal, gardening, landscaping, and asset repairs.
Property maintenance is an essential aspect of both real estate ownership and property management. For this reason, property managers must put systems in place to maintain functional, comfortable, and safe environments for their buildings’ occupants.
While recommended maintenance practices vary by asset, occupancy standards are enforced via state laws, local ordinances, and various International Property Maintenance codes. Of course, savvy property owners don’t solely enforce maintenance because they want to avoid run-ins with the law—they prioritize routine upkeep because they want to retain their investments’ value while keeping occupants safe and happy.
It is likely that new digitized services will continue to be introduced for various aspects of property management. . . . Whether or not property management is digitized is a key factor for competitiveness.Deloitte
What Is General Building Maintenance?
Building maintenance refers to activities undertaken to ensure buildings and their utility systems are safe, habitable, and in working order. While building maintenance shares the same goals as property maintenance, it doesn’t always include caring for the environment surrounding buildings. It’s worth mentioning that the term general building maintenance is often confused with property maintenance. While there is an overlap between the responsibilities, there are some key differences.
The most common building maintenance activities include:
- Cleaning surfaces such as gutters, handrails, windows, floors, and bathrooms
- Undertaking repairs on assets such as elevators and HVACs
- Maintaining utility systems such as plumbing and electrical services
- Ensuring the doors, roofs, walls, and windows are in excellent condition
Building maintenance activities are often categorized by level of priority. For example, emergency repairs are prioritized over less critical tasks because of time and budgetary constraints. Workers involved in building maintenance include janitors, facility managers, and maintenance technicians.
General maintenance technicians work full-time on properties, practicing reactive maintenance, emergency maintenance, and preventive maintenance.
Examples of Property Maintenance Tasks
Examples of everyday property maintenance tasks include:
- Fixing Leaks: A tenant reports a toilet leak to the property manager, who will outsource a plumber to fix the problem before it results in water damage.
- Elevator Maintenance: Elevator cars, hoistways, and machine rooms must be routinely serviced to ensure occupants don’t get stuck in between floors.
- Proper Drainage: Any stagnant water around a building should be cleared and adequate drainage systems installed. Stagnant water provides a breeding ground for insects that cause illnesses.
Of course, tasks may vary depending on whether the technician is practicing commercial property maintenance or residential property maintenance. Other maintenance activities include performing proactive inspections, servicing electrical and water supply systems, shoveling snow, and landscaping grounds.
What Do You Need to Manage a Property?
Regardless of the size of the property, routine maintenance is integral to staying in business. There’s no running away from property maintenance. As a result, property owners can choose to either a) do everything themselves, b) build an in-house maintenance team, or c) outsource their maintenance needs to a commercial property management business.
Tips on Developing an In-House Team
The potential downside to developing an in-house maintenance team is that everything is on you! Property owners and managers are responsible for the time-consuming tasks associated with planning, scheduling, and overseeing all maintenance activities. However, the upside to building an in-house team is tighter control over maintenance spending, deeper insights into tenant challenges, and greater personal investment in success.
Those wanting to put together an in-house property maintenance team should prioritize:
- Drilling Down on Staff Requirements: What skills are needed? How many different roles do those needs divide into? Which positions are the most important to fill, and which ones can be added later? Begin by matching every required maintenance activity with a specified skill. For example, which skills does a gardener need? As for the team’s size, consider each employee’s work shift and how many shifts are needed in a day.
- Do Due Diligence: Take your time to find the right fit for each role. Indeed, rushing interviews with maintenance technicians could prove costly in the long run. It’s advisable to do background checks on your applicants. In fact, maintenance tasks that are only performed once in a while, such as repairing broken-down elevators, can be outsourced.
Finally, use digital maintenance checklists like MaintainX to streamline standard operating procedures (SOPs), reduce errors, and increase efficiency.
Tips on Hiring Commercial Property Maintenance Support
For those seeking more widespread support, professional property management companies offer a more structured maintenance approach. They employ maintenance personnel who are trained and experienced in different areas of maintenance. Their property maintenance services include:
- Preventative Maintenance Planning and Scheduling: Professional maintenance companies develop well-organized maintenance management software that includes maintenance planning and scheduling for your property. The system includes regular inspections, maintenance task documentation, equipment upgrade recommendations, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for suppliers.
- Tenant Communication: The company will provide tenants with a system to lodge maintenance requests directly without bothering you. You will only need to attend to issues that need your specific attention.
- Financial Reporting: Maintenance companies create an estimated maintenance budget for the property. Also, they share periodic reports on maintenance expenses.
- Regulatory Compliance: Depending on your jurisdiction, every property owner must adhere to state and local laws and regulations. Professional maintenance companies regularly monitor and stay updated on the latest regulations to ensure compliance.
Unfortunately, selecting a reliable property maintenance company can be challenging. To begin, ask other local property owners for personal recommendations before conducting an Internet search.
Without a doubt, carry out due diligence before settling on a particular company. This includes requesting a portfolio including the provider’s present and past clients, licensing paperwork, and advertised accreditations. Often, the biggest challenge is finding that sweet spot between the management service you want and the budget you have.
Pros and Cons of In-House vs. Outsourcing Professional Management
| In-House Maintenance Team | Professional Management Team | |
| Pros | ● Direct supervision of team and activities● Better insights into maintenance issues● Improved communication and relationship with occupants● Complete control of maintenance budget● Faster response to emergencies | ● Structured maintenance planning and scheduling● Responsibilities of property owner● Full compliance with regulations● Easy budgeting for maintenance |
| Cons | ● Required time to build an effective team● Increased pressure to balance maintenance issues and property operations● Increased employee costs● Risk of non-compliance with regulations due to lack of knowledge | ● May be expensive in the long run● Risk of unreliable service provider● Decreased interaction between property owner and tenants● Can take time to react to emergencies● Difficult to get on-the-ground insights into maintenance activities |
Types of Buildings and Industries That Manage Properties
Private residential properties are often successfully managed by owners without the help of outsourced management services and extensive in-house teams. However, most larger properties and facilities require additional maintenance support.
Facilities with several elevators, boilers, and HVAC units require regular servicing, as are buildings with large spaces such as parking lots, hallways, and common areas.
Properties that require extensive property maintenance include:
- Hotels
- Bed and Breakfast Lodges
- Apartment Complexes and Other Rental Properties
- Community Living Properties
- Government Buildings
- Educational Facilities
To summarize, organizations within all industries may require both general building maintenance teams and property maintenance divisions.
How to Lead a Property Maintenance Team
A property maintenance team is only as good as its leader. Here are a few tips on how top property managers successfully build and lead world-class maintenance teams:
Display Trust
Encourage autonomy and give the team a sense of Encourage autonomy and give the team a sense of ownership over maintenance tasks. Furthermore, independence not only gives team members a sense of purpose but also enables them to improve their skills. Micromanagement signals that you don’t trust the team to deliver without constant supervision.
Encourage Learning
New maintenance techniques and technologies are always emerging. Keep the team updated on the latest trends by organizing workshops and seminars to learn new skills.
Take a Preventive Maintenance Approach
To be clear, constantly reacting to emergencies isn’t only expensive but is damaging to a leader’s reputation and a team’s morale. Stay on top of maintenance, and employees will feel better utilized.
Adopt CMMS Software
A Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) makes it easier to scale maintenance needs. In addition, it improves response time to maintenance requests as one can quickly get information on inventory plus maintenance schedules from a centralized database. While up to 80 percent of CMMS implementations fail, Reliability Plant provides tips to implement the system successfully.
The quickest way to uplevel a property maintenance team is by introducing work order software with built-in chat. MaintainX is the only provider in the marketplace with a smartphone app that includes instant messaging, group chat, and digital work order commenting. The feature allows technicians to troubleshoot with property managers and owners quickly. Work order accessibility via mobile CMMS is a must at this point.
Get a CMMS to Manage Your Property Maintenance
Even if property maintenance isn’t a requirement in most jurisdictions, it is in property owners’ best interest to develop organized strategies to extend the lifespan of critical assets, enhance their professional reputation for reliability, and reduce occupant turnover. Investing in a skilled maintenance team and user-friendly CMMS software will pay long-term dividends by achieving these goals. Book a tour to find out how MaintainX can help you implement and scale your maintenance operations!
Property maintenance FAQs
What Is the Easiest Way to Schedule Maintenance Tasks?
We recommend using CMMS software to schedule your maintenance tasks. Good CMMS software will enable you to optimize your maintenance tasks and save on costs. You can also assign work orders to remote teams and receive real-time updates on the progress.
How Do You Calculate Maintenance Costs?
Because some maintenance costs are indirect—and you cannot directly assign a cost to an end product or process—property owners may try to minimize spending on maintenance. But cutting back maintenance funding can be costly and counterproductive to original intentions in the long run. Don’t make a short-term financial decision that affects property values in the long term.
How should property owners estimate maintenance spending? Accountants often advice you to set aside 4 percent of the property’s replacement value for annual maintenance tasks. Additionally, management should implement an Operations and Maintenance (O&M) program.
What Is O&M?
O&M is an abbreviation for operations and maintenance. It enables maintenance teams to plan for each asset by creating proactive maintenance strategies (preventive and corrective) to minimize unplanned downtime and increase equipment efficiency.
With minimal unplanned downtime and maximum systems operation, you can optimize your maintenance costs–but it’s important to note that O&M costs are fixed regardless of the size of your equipment.
However, other ways to reduce your maintenance costs include:
- Training your maintenance staff on the appropriate technologies to reduce errors
- Implementing a robust preventive maintenance program
- Constantly measuring and analyzing your maintenance approaches to see where improvement is necessary
- Finding ways to identify problems before they occur (predictive maintenance)
