Emergency property management can be chaotic. The urgent nature of the situation leaves no room for error. A single mistake can be costly in more ways than one. Even seasoned landlords can’t always oversee after-hours emergencies well. That’s why discerning real estate investors use property managers to handle emergency maintenance in rentals to ensure everything goes smoothly.
If you’re unsure whether to sign a management agreement, consider the vital roles a competent property management team plays in these areas so you can deliver 24/7 rental property maintenance to tenants.
Some emergencies are more destructive than others. However, they all have the potential to negatively impact your finances when not urgently addressed.
Handling urgent repairs is racing against time — the sooner you repair the issue, the lesser the loss. For example, a roof leak during a downpour can lead to severe interior water damage when neglected. Water doesn’t mix with many building materials and electric appliances. Damp areas are breeding grounds for mold growth. Expenses can add up quickly, and your restoration cost will skyrocket before you know it.
Moreover, your tenants may do more than not renew their leases to penalize you for being nonresponsive to emergency repair calls. Arizona is not a rent strike state, meaning tenants can’t withhold rent when they feel their landlords violate the lease for any reason. However, renters may take matters into their own hands after sending a 10-day notice to repair something, including reimbursing themselves for any DIY repairs by deducting their repair costs from rent.
Allowing emergencies to spiral can negatively affect your bottom line since you can’t control how renters approach home projects and choose contractors. Even worse, disgruntled renters may sue and seek compensation for their emotional distress and annoyance.
Property managers ensure rapid response for rental property emergencies. They treat pressing matters accordingly to prevent repairs from escalating and minimize losses. Companies like Mark Brower Properties have 24/7 live phone availability for maintenance, so property managers can promptly acknowledge and address tenant needs. Property management companies have a Rolodex of reliable contacts that can deploy a well-equipped crew to manage the situation on speed dial.
Granted, you can build a trusted vendor network for maintenance, but establishing long-term relationships with dependable local contractors takes time. Property managers get to screen more vendors and see which ones provide satisfactory service at short notice because they encounter emergencies more frequently than self-managing landlords.
Using a property manager to offer tenant emergency services also allows you to prevent undue safety incidents. Prioritizing tenant safety can reduce the need to file future liability claims and keep your insurance rate low.
Many landlords think about home upkeep seasonally. Conversely, property management companies live and breathe rental maintenance daily. Their staff undergoes regular refresher training to assess situations properly, remember property management emergency protocols and execute them seamlessly when necessary.
Property managers know their priorities and don’t panic under pressure. They follow the appropriate protocol to advise tenants what to do until help arrives and prevent dire situations — like carbon monoxide leakage — from worsening.
Property management professionals are agile thinkers. They can assess a situation and know what constitutes an emergency when responding to maintenance requests. Implied warranty of habitability is a hallmark of the Arizona Residential Landlord and Tenant law, so any situation rendering rental units unfit to live in is an emergency — such as no air conditioning during the extremely hot Arizona summer months of June, July and August.
The line between ordinary and emergency maintenance requests is occasionally thin. Property managers have more experience dealing with unusual situations and may access relevant legal advice more quickly, so they make better judgment calls than individual landlords.
Furthermore, it’s not always possible to permanently solve an emergency maintenance request. Some issues simply require more resources and planning. Mitigating losses by applying quick-relief remedies is a tried-and-true strategy to temporarily improve a problem rental’s habitability.
For instance, providing affected tenants with portable AC units can mitigate the impact of broken HVAC equipment and give you more time to consider a long-term solution.
Similarly, walking tenants through how to find their master shut-off valve and cut their water supply can alleviate flood damage. Mark Brower Properties tags the emergency shut-off valves of the units it manages with visible, durable 3D-printed labels to help tenants spot them easily during stressful situations.
Another effective tactic is to empower tenants to mitigate losses through self-help. After all, emergency mitigation rests on the shoulders of both tenants and property owners or managers.
In many cases, there’s something renters can do to reduce the impact of emergencies on their quality of life and finances. Experienced property managers remind tenants to store food items in a cooler when their refrigerator breaks, potentially saving them hundreds of dollars worth of groceries. Advising renters to stop using plumbing when the drain lines aren’t working can prevent flooding and safeguard their belongings from water damage. Otherwise, the tenants may share the blame for the damage.
A landlord or property manager shouldn’t enter rented premises outside regular business hours. If an issue isn’t an emergency and can wait, a tenant must receive at least a two-day notice before anyone can investigate the problem and control rental property damage.
Property managers value prevention over cure. They maintain rentals proactively, allowing them to identify and address wear and tear early. Worn-out structural components can render a house more susceptible to weather-related damage.
Landlords naturally want to put off big-ticket expenses — such as AC upgrades and roof replacements — and often hope their aging house components can last longer when they’re on the fritz. Proactive maintenance helps delay the inevitable with routine inspections and timely repairs. These measures can add more years to items like air conditioning systems, whose useful life in Arizona is 15 years, and roofs, buying you more time to do a cost-benefit analysis and make an informed decision.
Experienced property managers also urge rental owners to replace water heaters older than 10 years. Old heaters are highly prone to malfunction, increasing the likelihood of emergencies.
Unchecked property deterioration may make you liable for neglect and jeopardize your insurance claim when you file. An insurance adjuster may think your case has no merit because you didn’t do your part to mitigate the damage.
For instance, homeowners’ insurance policies cover mold growth only when it directly results from an external factor you can’t meaningfully avert. A towering yard tree falling on a roof section amid a hurricane is a classic example.
This incident would expose the interior of your rentals to water, setting the stage for mold growth. You can’t control a tree’s resistance to wind damage. However, you can make it less vulnerable to weather by using an arborist to remove deadwood and prune structurally unsound branches ahead of a storm. Putting off tree care may backfire, as an insurance adjuster may use it against you.
A property manager’s services during emergency maintenance incidents are invaluable. If you own rentals in the Phoenix metropolitan area, entrust your property management needs to Mark Brower Properties to keep your tenants happy, stay on the good side of regulators and ensure your maintenance budget remains below 10% of your annual revenue for newer units and under 15%-20% for older properties.
Reach out today to learn everything you’ll gain when you sign a management agreement with us!
Mark Brower Properties is honored to announce that we’ve been selected for the 2019 Best of Mesa Award in the Property Management category by the Mesa Award Program.
According to the press release “Each year, the Mesa Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Mesa area a great place to live, work and play.” You can read the full release here.
We are so pleased to have been independently recognized for our efforts to provide quality, trustworthy property management and our contributions to the local small business community. We will continue to strive to provide the best services, trust, protection and peace of mind to our clients.
The Mesa Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Mesa area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.
The Mesa Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community’s contributions to the U.S. economy.
We’re proud to share today that our commitment to quality property management services has given us great Yelp and Google reviews, and that Mark Brower Properties has been selected as one of the Best Property Management Companies of 2019.
At Mark Brower Properties, we’ve been working hard over the years to be the best property management solution for landlords in the Phoenix, Arizona area. We’ve done this by providing trustworthy home leasing, property management, and sales services with the Owner’s best interests in mind. What does that mean practically? We don’t make money when things go badly (evictions, lots of repairs, etc) and we don’t partner with service providers to mark-up maintenance fees. We do best when things go smoothly, and that’s the goal for all the properties we manage.
PropertyManagement.com’s goal is to connect property owners with the best management companies to ensure your investments continue to flourish. They scored management companies on over 30 different variables, including reputation, credibility, experience, and professionalism, to provide landlords with a hand-picked list of the best property management companies in the Phoenix area.
In selecting Mark Brower Property Management, they noted that: “Mark Brower Properties is committed to being trustworthy and landlord-friendly while also following an extremely high standard of management. Tenants must agree to mandatory, regular property inspections by the management company. Mark Brower protects the owners’ investments at all times by catching potential problems before they become serious and stressful. Since Mark Brower Properties is so proactive, it is able to offer several guarantees.”
We love thrilling people with our service, giving landlords peace of mind, and tenants a beautiful clean and safe place to call home. Which is why and we’re so pleased to be honored as one of the top companies in Arizona. Join the hundreds of landlords that have entrusted their property to our care—starting at just $99/m— and experience the exemplary service that got us recognized as one of the best of 2019 in Arizona.
You are the owner of a home in search of the right property manager to hire. Maybe you don’t yet know what makes up the ideal property manager, but you do know your end goal: (1) optimal financial performance of your property and (2) peace of mind. As you continue your search, here are 9 things to consider in potential property managers to ensure that you achieve these goals. This list goes beyond the basics, because as important as monthly management fees and rapidly finding tenants are, they become less meaningful if they are not coupled with practices that align with your interests as the owner.
The obvious answer to this question is the monthly management fee, but it’s important to think beyond that. There are any number of additional sources of revenue that you may encounter as you interact with your property manager (several will be pointed out individually below). Before jumping at the lowest monthly fee, investigate all ancillary fees in order to figure out the true cost of property management.
Often times fees themselves are only half the story. Equally critical is the behaviors they motivate. A fee structure that has appealingly low costs may encourage suboptimal management in order to increase profits (a few specific examples are included in this list). When considering a property manager, examine every fee and avoid those that present a conflict of interest with the responsible management of your property.
Be aware of situations where property managers are marking up maintenance costs or using in-house maintenance. In cases such as these, where maintenance becomes a source of revenue, it can have the adverse effect of incentivizing unnecessary maintenance and targeting less than ideal tenants that may allow the property to fall into disrepair.
Invariably some portion of late fees will be absorbed by the property manager in order to recoup costs. The issue arises in situations where property managers retain 100% of late fees, as it can motivate them to target non-ideal tenants who are more likely to incur these late fees, thus boosting revenue. Ideally a property manager will, to some degree or another, split late fees with the owner.
Property managers will typically charge a leasing fee that covers costs and perhaps generates a very modest profit. Be weary of higher leasing fees, as they can encourage managers to favor short term tenants in order to collect leasing fees at every turnover.
Finding a tenant quickly is often a priority among owners, and there is no disputing that low vacancy is a desirable goal. However, this goal must be balanced with the desire for an ideal tenant. A little extra screening in this phase can lower costs for owners and property managers alike, ensuring fewer evictions, lower maintenance costs, and longer term tenants.
Regular inspections of your property are in the interest of both you as the owner and the property manager. They encourage responsibility and accountability in tenants, help lower long term maintenance costs, and foster a positive relationship between all involved parties. These inspections should not be optional, nor be an added cost to the owner.
There are several telling measures that can give a good idea as to how a property manager operates. Ask for data on the number of past evictions, percentage of tenants that pay late, percentage of tenants that renew their lease, etc. They might not always have the information to give or be willing to share it even if they do, but it will spark a discussion about related practices that can be insightful.
A property manager worth your trust is operating with a long-term focus. They manage your property in ways that will not only generate consistent, sustainable revenue today, but will also lower your long term costs and ensure the highest value of your property in the future. This incorporates everything discussed above; a fee structure that aligns with your own goals, a system that finds the highest quality tenants, and practices that ensure that you, the owner, are getting the most out of your property without unnecessary worry about your rental investments.
