Maintaining a Rental Property

Hello everybody, I'm Michael Gregg with Rob Brooks Property Management, and I'm here today with Danielle White, who is also a property manager with Rob Brooks Realty. Today, we're going to discuss vendors and the maintenance process for the homes we manage. We've had the opportunity to work with many different vendors in the area and have discovered some are easier to work with than others, and they come in all different price ranges. So, we have a lot of experience in knowing which vendors to contact and how to facilitate the repair process for your home.

Danielle, what experiences have you had with vendors, and what insights can you share? Well, I can tell you that we've worked with so many different ones that after a while, you know which ones you can count on to either get an estimate in a timely fashion or actually get to the property to do the work, and then what quality of work they're going to do. They may not be the cheapest vendor in town, but if their quality is good, the product is going to last, whether they've had to repair or build something brand new, whatever the case may be. I think that's usually more important than the price.

I think we do a good job of trying to troubleshoot from the beginning what the issue is with the property. For example, if something goes out, we might ask, "Would you check the condensate line on your AC?" Absolutely! Simple things like not having hot water, we ask, "Did you check the breaker at your hot water heater? Did you check the breaker box?" Or, "Why don't you have power to this or that?" We keep manuals for all appliances on file, so we can pull out the troubleshooting guide straight from the manual for the microwave or the oven. This saves time and effort on our part, as well as expense for the owners and the headache for the tenants of having to deal with a vendor coming in. We try to find a quick and easy fix for the issue so we don't blindly call a vendor as our first step. We actually try to troubleshoot and work with the tenants to find out what the issue is.

Another important element about Rob Brooks Realty is that we have an in-house handyman, Mike, and we keep him very busy. He's a great resource because he can often deal with things that we would normally have to hire a contractor or another vendor for. Having an in-house handyman really saves the homeowner a lot of money. I've worked a lot with Mike, and I know you have too; he's great and does a lot of different things. Mike, and really any other vendor we work with, we always make sure they're licensed and insured, which could potentially be a huge liability issue.

Another thing that typically keeps our vendors happy and wanting to work with Rob Brooks Realty is the fact that we make sure their invoices are taken care of in a timely fashion. Just like we try to provide good service for the owners and tenants, we also make sure to take care of our local vendors. If there's one thing that will get a vendor to not work with you, it's slow payment. We work diligently to make sure those vendors are paid, and we let them know that we appreciate them, so they like working with us here at Rob Brooks Realty. Not that I can think of. Well, everybody, thank you so much for joining us today. Again, I'm Michael Gregg with Rob Brooks Realty, and this is Danielle. Thank you so much.