What a maintenance coordination process should look like before you have one

Most small management operations run maintenance out of a phone. A tenant texts, someone calls a vendor, the vendor eventually invoices, and the owner asks three weeks later what happened. It works up to a point and then it does not. The process that scales has four parts. Intake in one place, so every request has a record and a timestamp regardless of whether it arrived by text, email or call. Triage against a written standard — what is an emergency, what has an owner approval threshold, what the tenant is responsible for under the lease. Dispatch to a vendor list that is current on insurance and licensing. And close-out with photographs, the invoice and a note the owner can read. Two numbers are worth tracking from the first month: time from request to first contact with the tenant, and time from request to completion. They predict tenant renewals better than almost anything else, and renewals are where a management fee stops competing with vacancy. The approval threshold deserves to be in the management agreement in writing. A manager who calls the owner about every eighty-dollar repair is slow; a manager who replaces an air handler without asking has a problem. The number belongs in the contract, not in the manager's head. Vendor compliance is the quiet risk. A vendor whose insurance lapsed is a vendor whose injury on a property becomes a conversation with the owner's carrier. This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Rules change and every deal is different — check your own case with a licensed professional. Alberto Zaltzberg — Adonait · adonait.com