The argument has been made about whether using in-house maintenance or contracted maintenance is more efficient. Contracting work can ensure the work is done correctly the first time with highly qualified vendors, while using in-house maintenance teams can be timely and usually less costly. There are typically three approaches to maintenance management:
- Strictly In-House
- A combination of In-House and Contracted
- Strictly Contracted
Types of St. Louis Rental Property Maintenance
Factors like cost and quality, expertise, tools, equipment and technology, risk reduction, and management all need to be considered when deciding how to manage maintenance. You should also consider what type of maintenance you will likely be performing. Outside of emergency maintenance responses, there are two types of maintenance:
- Corrective maintenance
- Preventative maintenance
The more common of the two, corrective maintenance, is when a tenant calls in a maintenance request and the landlord sends someone out to fix it.
Preventative maintenance takes a proactive step to identify and fix potential problems before they become worse. In theory, the more preventative maintenance the landlord does, the less corrective maintenance he or she will have to do later.
The best maintenance departments provide their tenants with both. To have a good maintenance department, you need to provide quality work and exceptional service.
How Deca Handles Maintenance
With a fully trained maintenance staff, Deca Realty offers expert maintenance services in many necessary areas such as plumbing, electrical, appliance repair, HVAC, pest control, and carpentry. Although Deca’s staff is well-trained, there are some jobs that we have to outsource to our trusted vendors. We have accumulated a list of preferred vendors over our 30-year history and we trust anyone we send to your property to do the job properly and in a timely manner.
One of the advantages of using our hybrid maintenance system is that it allows us to deal with an emergency ASAP. Instead of having to call and wait for a vendor, we can send one of our maintenance techs immediately. Deca is able to respond to emergencies quickly with a 24/7 on-call manager and at least one maintenance tech available. Another huge advantage of using the hybrid maintenance crew is that pricing stays consistent and less costly for you. When the in-house crew is used, the pricing is based on labor and materials. When the project requires an outside vendor, Deca receives bids in order to find the right price to do the job correctly.
Finally, using in-house maintenance crews allows us to check on the quality of our work. When a work order is completed, someone from the maintenance crew calls to make sure the work was done in a satisfactory manner. This keeps tenants happy because they know their needs matter, and it preserves the condition and the value of your investment.
If you’d like to talk about maintenance for your rental property and how we can best serve your needs, please don’t hesitate to contact us at Deca Realty. We hope to be your trusted St. Louis property management resource.
