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Thursday, April 9, 2009

Property Management - Maintenance Considerations

For the property manager, maintenance is a major responsibility that involves preserving and improving the property. The overriding objective is to maximize the owners profits while holding down expenses for property upkeep. This person must accurately assess the property's upkeep needs and employ qualified personnel to do the work. These jobs will break down into recurring jobs, preventative maintenance, repairs, and major expansion or remodeling.

One of the main considerations is the hiring of personnel to work these jobs. Hiring above the need will waste money, while inadequate maintenance staffing will result in degradation of the property, and unnecessary expenses in the longer term. Often property managers will contract out these jobs, especially the ones involving new construction. Contracting out these jobs can be an efficient method of cost control through the bidding process.

Larger properties with about 20 units or more will probably require at least one maintenance person on permanent staff. These permanent staff can better conduct the recurring upkeep, and cleaning, some of which must be done daily.

Variations in the economy make it difficult to plan ahead for building upkeep costs, but this is a necessary skill of the property manager. Property managers must employ a bidding and evaluation method for contract maintenance. Costs should be minimized.

A reasonable estimate of repair and upkeep costs is probably in the range of 25% of all the income received in rents. This is for a residential property. The driver or instigation for much of this work is tenant requests. Due to the complexity of tracking the building's inventory, determining what jobs need to be done, and hiring these jobs done, a good computer software program is recommended. The computer can help greatly in tracking the many moving parts of managing a large property. Balancing tenant requests, occupancy, building condition, and costs make property management a challenging career.

[expert=Edmund_F_Desmond]

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