How To Create An Apartment Building Maintenance Checklist Template
Apartment building maintenance is time-consuming and overwhelming, especially if you do it mindlessly and with no plan. Mismanagement is also a quick way to waste a lot of money.
However, with a checklist to help you through the maintenance process, you can save money, improve residents’ living conditions, and catch property damage early on.
Let’s look at creating an apartment building maintenance checklist template that covers all your bases and makes the maintenance process more manageable.
What Is An Apartment Building Maintenance Checklist Template?
Apartment building maintenance is the routine inspection of a property to note and fix issues. A maintenance checklist helps owners keep track of everything they need to inspect. It ensures they don’t miss any critical components. You can customize a maintenance checklist template to include a budget, contractor, and task ledger.
Benefits Of A Maintenance Checklist Template
With regular inspections, property managers can prevent maintenance issues by detecting and fixing them before the problem escalates. This benefits both building owners and residents, creating a safe living space and saving maintenance costs. Here are some more benefits of having a maintenance checklist template on hand.
Prevent Serious Maintenance Problems
Maintenance works as a preventative measure. Property managers can catch and fix problems instead of waiting for them to become so bad that they demand fixing or for residents to request a repair.
Improve Residents’ Living Conditions
Happy homes mean happy residents. Routine and comprehensive maintenance improves tenants’ living conditions and ensures long-term rentals in your apartment building.
There are many benefits to keeping your residents happy, including easier rent negotiations, better property treatment, and longer leases. You’ll also establish an excellent local reputation, keeping your vacancies minimum.
Save Money
Preventing maintenance issues or catching them before they devolve into complete chaos saves you a lot of money. Buildings that don’t undergo routine maintenance tend to break down like tooth cavities—the inside decays before the outside. Building maintenance issues can set you back tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars.
Increase Property Value
Regular maintenance increases your property’s value. Building owners that dedicate themselves to creating safe and clean homes can charge more, and residents will be willing to pay more.
Create A Printable Apartment Building Maintenance Checklist In 3 Steps
Now that we’ve covered the benefits of an apartment building maintenance checklist let’s look at how to create one in 3 easy steps.
Step 1: Choose Your Inspection Frequency
First, determine your inspection frequency. Inspections can be anywhere from daily to monthly, depending on what you need to inspect. Testing timeframes will vary depending on the cost and urgency of the maintenance. For example, you don’t need to do structural testing as often as you need to do electrical testing.
Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all answer. All buildings are affected by local issues, like weather, climate, building materials, etc.
Consider your apartment building, its unique needs, and the components that cause problems the most. Use that data to determine the necessary inspection frequency for different building components.
Step 2: Prioritize Safety
When doing maintenance checks, you’ll inevitably find yourself juggling various problems that need to be fixed. In such situations, always prioritize residents and building safety above all else. These are the types of preventative measures that will save you a lot of money down the line.
If you have to choose between two or more priority issues, work your way down the list by checking off the more expensive and dangerous issues first.
Step 3: Delegate Tasks
DIYing all your maintenance processes isn’t sustainable for two reasons.
First, it will take a lot of time that you likely don’t have. Don’t risk maintenance falling behind. Second, the maintenance quality will be lacking. Some maintenance issues need the help of a professional.
Luckily, the solution is to delegate the work to trusted professionals.
Highlight the type of contractors you’ll need for the inspections and maintenance. If you already have local professionals you trust, list them on your checklist. If you don’t, research local forums and building associations for trusted contractors with reasonable prices and add them to your checklist.
Common Maintenance Tasks To Include On Your Checklist
With so much to do, it’s easy to overlook everyday maintenance tasks. Here are a few to get your checklist started.
- Window and window frame inspections
- Common area furniture inspections
- Fire safety equipment inspections
- Interior cosmetic
- Exterior cosmetic
- Electrical inspections
- General safety equipment inspections
- Elevator maintenance
- Regular cleaning and trash collection
- Signage on doors, mailboxes, and building exteriors
- Roofing inspections
- Security system inspections
As you create your checklist, you’ll notice issues unique to your apartment building. Add them to your checklist as soon as possible to avoid forgetting them. Also, keep your landlord repair responsibilities in mind when you create your checklist to ensure you cover all bases.
Tips For Improving Apartment Building Maintenance
The apartment maintenance process can be overwhelming when you get started. You can use these apartment maintenance tips to save time, money, and stress.
Decide On What You Can Do Yourself
While it is important to delegate tasks to professionals, there are smaller tasks that you or an employee can take care of. These tasks can be done in one afternoon and don’t require any professional experience or equipment.
Make a note of your expertise and those of your employees, and create a list of tasks you can manage independently. Add them to your checklist.
This saves time waiting for professional help and reduces unnecessary spending, which you can invest into other, more intense maintenance tasks.
Add A Budget
Add expected costs for the inspection and maintenance as you add tasks to your checklist. If you don’t know what costs to expect, use the internet to get a general idea and round up.
Once you hire contractors and manage repairs, you can add the actual costs and create a more cohesive budget. This is also a great way to record all your maintenance expenses.
Remember To Inspect, Detect, And Prevent
The secret to effective maintenance is consistent inspection, detection, and prevention. Create your maintenance checklist and stick to it. Don’t fall behind or put off inspections because you believe it’s not serious. Your goal should be to catch and fix faulty building components before they become a problem.
Work Smarter With RentCheck’s Automated Inspections
Creating an apartment building maintenance checklist is a great, manual way to track and prevent building issues that could cost money and scare off residents.
But there’s a way to streamline the process even further. RentCheck automates the inspection process by enabling residents to complete it on their own, freeing up time and money and empowering residents.
Sign up with RentCheck today to make inspections easier with automation and customization like nothing you’ve seen before.
