Episode 12: As A Tenant, What Kind Of Maintenance Can You Expect From Your Landlord?

As a tenant, it is very healthy and normal to see maintenance occurring at your property.  It shows that the landlord cares about your home, its safe upkeep and longevity.  In this week's episode, we discuss the difference between a trouble call and maintenance, the timing of periodic maintenance you should be seeing and how the weather can impact that maintenance.  If you are a landlord, we also help you develop or improve your annual maintenance program!

Here are some resources to download:
Annual Maintenance Notifications
Annual Maintenance Checklist
Annual Repair List

Listen to full episode :

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Full Episode Transcription

Welcome to my life as a landlord, where we untangle all things housing and educate the curious. If you're

looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've come to the right

show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it. Well,

welcome to the show. I'm your host, Dr. Jen, and this is my life as a landlord. Thank you so much for

joining me today. Today we are doing a lesson as a tenant. So with a tenant perspective. Many of you

who have been listening to Podcast know that I have five content buckets. One is as a landlord. Two is as

a tenant and then also as a real estate developer. As a real estate investor and then other Salisbury

adventures. Last week's show was all about why and how you as a landlord, screen your tenants. But this

week's show as a tenant, what can you expect your landlord to do regarding maintenance? Now

remember, maintenance is planned. Trouble. Calls are not. Trouble Calls are things like Stopped up,

toilet, towel bar fell down, things like that. Trouble. Calls are not planned items, but maintenance is

planned. Now remember, too, as a tenant, this is a business relationship with you and your landlord. You

are paying rent. Your landlord is providing you a space in an asset. And this is a business relationship.

You have to have good communication. You've got to make sure that you understand. What are your

responsibilities? What are the landlord's responsibilities? And to that end, what should you be

expecting the landlord to help maintain? This should be on a regular basis of some kind and it should be

planned. And if they need to enter your unit, they need to give you some proper notice, whatever that is

in your area. And remember, that's very geographic specific. If you don't know the rules in your area, I

highly recommend that you Google either your state or province and then housing laws or tenancy code,

something. So you know, as a tenant, what are the requirements for proper notice? And there also might

be some maintenance requirements as well. It depends on where you are. There are some maintenance

items that are required, but let's get into it. What can you expect as a tenant from your landlord? Well, the

first item that you can expect is weekly maintenance. Weekly maintenance, you will see often things like

emptying the garbage dumpsters, the laundry or common area should be cleaned. At least I'm thinking

weekly, sometimes biweekly, but it depends on how many units you have. And this weekly maintenance

can be weather dependent. Things like snow bears. Up in Canada, we've got bears and this is an issue.

And so while the weekly maintenance is something that we plan, if there's a bear in the dumpster,

obviously that's a trouble call. That's not only a trouble call, that's an emergency. We need to work on

that. We need to get that dealt with. But the weekly maintenance should be something that you can see on

a regular basis. You can depend on it. Things like some signage, every Monday at between nine and

twelve, the laundry is going to get cleaned. Nobody put their laundry in the machines at that time. Right?

That's weekly maintenance. As a tenant, that's pretty reasonable. You should expect that. You should

expect things like the garbage can should be dumped if there's garbage in the common areas, things like

that. Okay, so that's the first thing, weekly maintenance. Then you got monthly maintenance. Now,

monthly maintenance can be very house or build specific things like light bulbs. In the common areas,

there's usually a requirement to check them on a monthly basis or even adjust the timers, depending on

your daylight. 2s Swings in time. Some people have got daylight savings, and sometimes it doesn't affect

them at all. But light bulbs in the common area, that's a safety item. You've got to make sure that your

stairs and your walkways are well lit. And the other thing for monthly maintenance items is safety items

that aren't urgent, but they get picked up on a monthly basis. So things there's a loose bolt on the handrail

that you noticed, okay, let's go get a wrench. Let's tighten that sucker up. Things like on the steps, if it's

winter, 1s maybe we put roof shingles on some of the steps, right? Or you put paint with walnut chips in

it so you don't skid when you're on the steps. If they're icy on a monthly basis, if you're inspecting this

kind of stuff and you're walking around going, let's see, let's just make sure that these safety items on a

monthly basis are getting taken care of, but somebody's looking at them, and then they should be logging

them as well. We have a log in one of our buildings that we have to maintain for the building inspector,

for the fire captain. And that's one of the things, is they want the light bulbs checked on a monthly basis.

Now, if you've noticed, the weekly maintenance items and the monthly maintenance items do not involve

going into units. 1s But the third item, which is annual or seasonal maintenance, does. So when we're

doing annual maintenance, which is a planned event, usually takes three days to do annual maintenance.

When we do annual maintenance on our units, it's something that we do as a company that we enter all

units, we have proper notice that we post and say we're going to be conducting these checks in your units.

And usually we check the sinks. We check underneath the sinks for dripping water. We check if they've

got a heat pump in there. We clean their filter and their heat pump, and we're checking smoke detectors.

We're checking safety items in there. But we're also making sure that everybody's behaving and there's

no mischief going on. There's no pot growing in the units. If there's not supposed to be pot growing, there

making sure there's no cats or aquarium animals if they're not supposed to have that stuff. We're making

sure that ten people aren't staying in the unit and there's not bunk beds in the living room, things like that.

We are making sure that everything is as it should be, but we're also making sure that the basic safety

items in the unit are taken care of and addressed. The walkthrough of these units can take 15 to 20

minutes per unit, but it also can go much faster. I do have our game plan for annual maintenance. And

you know what? That's actually something I'm going to put on our website so you can see how we do our

annual maintenance. There's a very specific thing that we do with a clipboard. It takes three people a step

ladder. It's very specific. And we've done this for so many years on a recurring basis that we've got it

down pretty good as a system. When we give notice, when we actually conduct the inspections and we

enter the units, and then when we do what's called annual maintenance recovery, which of course, there

is a repair list, if there's small items that can be addressed while we're in the unit, we will do that. But if

it's something that's a bigger repair, not urgent, not a leaking like Gushing Faucet, that's an emergency.

But if it's something that needs to be addressed, like the door, let's say they've got a bifold door and the

door is either broken or it's hitting the wall or causing some damage or something, that's something that

we will schedule as a part of recovery from annual maintenance. Some of the other annual maintenance

items that we do is we've got to test fire alarms, right? We actually just did this. You test the fire alarm.

This is a scheduled test that you give proper notice. We actually even give notice to the neighbors so that

if they hear the fire alarms going off, they don't call the fire department. It's. Other annual maintenance

items includes the building inspector. Sometimes the fire captain wants to walk through. At that point,

they're looking for business licenses. They want to make sure our business license is not only posted, but

current. They want to look at our logs, and sometimes they'll want to see in any vacant units. They don't

want to enter and disturb any current ten ended units. But testing the fire alarm. When we actually test

the fire alarm, we need to enter as many units as possible. And of course, this day and age after COVID,

if someone is COVID isolating, obviously that's a valid reason to not enter their unit. But we will take

note and say, you know what? We didn't test this unit during the fire alarm. So during annual

maintenance, we need to make sure we get in there. That's really important. If the other thing for annual

or seasonal maintenance, in the seasonal maintenance aspect, during the winter snowfall, snowfall

removal, salting the sidewalks, that's something that we have to do. In the fall, leaf removals, and also

making sure that the leaves branches are not crowding the sidewalks or the parking area, making sure that

the area is tidy. In the spring, when everything gets nice and green, including the algae on the buildings,

we usually do a good power wash on the buildings and trim the trees. Either trim the hedges or trim the

fruit trees. Try to the bears away if we can, up in British Columbia and then in the summer, in the

summer when you've got a lot of good days, that's when we'll do things like roof repairs, gutter

replacement, staircase upgrades, handrail upgrades, and that will be something that we usually coordinate

with the tenants. Even though those items are outside of their units, it's important that they know if

somebody's hammering on the staircase outside their unit that they're not startled. They're included in this

and saying, look, we're doing an upgrade. We need to make sure that maintenance is done. So good

communication is key when you're doing any of the annual seasonal maintenance, whether the tenant

realizes that this is going on or not. These are very strategic maintenance items. And in fact, as a tenant,

you want to see landlords doing this. This means the landlords are not deferring maintenance. They're not

putting things off, they're keeping things upkeep. They're keeping the age and the longevity of the

building. They are very aware of, 1s for example, the age of the roof. When was the last time the roof

was either replaced or inspected or caulked around the sun windows? You know what I mean? So it just

depends on the building itself. But as a tenant, it's a good thing to see your landlord doing some of these

maintenance items. I highly encourage you as a tenant 1s to be thankful when a landlord is doing this,

because I know plenty of landlords do not do this. And as a result, when they go there's some kind of a I

want to say catastrophe, there's some kind of emergency and they realize that it the roof has failed and it's

failed because nobody did maintenance along the way. We are trying to avoid that. And as a tenant,

seeing your landlord do maintenance is a good thing. Okay. So I'm going to give a call to action. I

would normally give a call to action to the tenants, but as a tenant, you're expecting your landlord. What

kind of things can you expect from your landlord? So I'm going to turn this around. If you're listening to

this, as a landlord, the action item is actually on you on this one. If you don't have an annual maintenance

program right now on your properties, I challenge you to create one and take a look at the website.

Mylifeasolandlord.com I'm going to have some templates on there, templates for proper notice.

Checklists my checklist on how I do annual maintenance and then the recovery of the annual

maintenance. And the checklist is going to be very interesting to you because it is literally how do we do

this? What items do you need before you do annual maintenance? What are we looking for? Why do we

even go in? And then on the notice, letters to the tenants. We say specifically we're coming in during this

time. And we usually give them three days and say, we're coming in on this day, and then we have two

days for recovery. If there is something you want us to look at, please write it on this letter and put it on

your fridge. So if you can imagine, guess what on the checklist. When we first enter the unit, the first

thing we check is, is the letter on their fridge. Because if it is and they've got something there, we add it

to our checklist and we go, okay, this light bulb is burned out or this faucet is leaking. Okay, that needs to

be looked at. It's a good way for the tenant to communicate with the landlord. So that's my call to action

to the landlord. Create an annual maintenance program. Feel free to steal all of the items that I'm going to

give you. The templates I'm going to give you on my life Asalandlord.com. Maintaining your buildings,

maintaining your asset not only takes care of the tenant, it takes care of the asset for the long term. You

really want that? Okay, here we go. So create your annual maintenance program. The next episode. Next

week as a real estate developer, finding a Contractor finding a Contractor part one. This is a long process

for finding a contractor, so stay tuned. Next week, our next episode. Episode Number 13 finding a

Contractor Part One thanks so much for listening. I hope you learned something. We'll see you next time.

Thank you for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes and all the links mentioned in

today's episode, visit our website@www.mylifeasalandlord.com. If you're looking for educational

resources for getting into real estate, investing, becoming a landlord, or even a better tenant, then I have a

page on my website to get you started looking for a solution to the pickle that you're in. I have

suggestions for that too. You can throw your situation on my Facebook group, My Life Is a Landlord,

and let our community help you with solutions. Also, before you go, make sure you subscribe to the Pod

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Thank you again for joining me, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury, in this episode of My Life as a Landlord. I'll see

you next time.