Performing regular maintenance on your rental property is a great way to avoid costly repairs and limit maintenance requests from tenants. Checking the condition of your rental is often done before tenants move in, but it’s also important to conduct seasonal maintenance to prepare the unit for the fall and winter seasons.
For that reason, we outline what to check when performing fall property maintenance for your rental property and how to log associated costs.
Here is a fall apartment maintenance checklist to guide you along the process and a free PDF template to download.
Over time, the gutters installed along a property’s roof can get clogged or damaged, especially after harsh weather conditions. Failing to check the gutters or unclog them can cause structural damage, overflow, and damage to nearby windows.
Landlords should ideally check the gutters twice a year, but this can vary depending on the age of the house. You can outsource contractors to check them or do it yourself with a ladder. However, be cautious when working on a ladder to avoid injury.
If you live in an area that experiences cold weather, rodents and pests may try to enter the property through tiny holes to escape the dropping temperatures. When examining the property, check if holes are easily accessible to rodents. If so, fill those spaces or set traps to stop them from entering.
In the case of multiple rodents, it may be worth getting the property checked by an exterminator to avoid an unpleasant experience for tenants.
Similar to having a faulty air conditioning system, it’s important to check the heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), and furnace before the weather gets colder. This is especially important since most states require landlords to keep the property at a minimum temperature during the winter.
Failing to check a furnace during the fall can increase the chances of the furnace breaking down during the winter, which can be costly to repair and result in unhappy tenants. To check the HVAC and furnace, you can hire an HVAC contractor to let you know if everything works properly, needs to be repaired, or replaced.
Another important step is winterizing your plumbing, which is how plumbing systems are prepared for the winter to avoid being negatively affected. This typically entails insulating the pipes, draining the faucets, and so on. Although this step is more beneficial for the wintertime, it’s best to complete this step before cold temperatures hit.
Check the windows and doors for cracks that need to be sealed or caulked to stop cold air from entering the property. There may be instances where you’ll need to invest in a new window or door if faulty, so it’s best to do this during the fall season.
Some states require landlords to install smoke and carbon monoxide detectors that function properly. For that reason, periodically check all smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to ensure they’re working and haven’t been tampered with by tenants.
Stairs, porches, and decks can naturally wear down over time, so check them during the fall to catch any issues that could result in an injury. You should also prepare outdoor spaces for the cold by covering outdoor furniture with protective covers.
While this step doesn’t require manually checking something in the rental property, it’s helpful to have resources on hand to prepare for snow and hail. Items such as ice melt can be beneficial to use during heavy snowfall, as well as generators and other light sources in case of power outages.
Maintenance can often result in associated property expenses, especially if something within the property needs to be repaired or replaced. You can manually track property maintenance expenses with a spreadsheet or leverage platforms like Avail to easily track property income and expenses for multiple rental properties.
With Avail, the rental property accounting dashboard will automatically populate with repair costs included in logged maintenance requests. Other payments, such as rent payments, will also populate on the dashboard if you collect rent with Avail, making it easy to streamline the bookkeeping process for your rentals for free. For one-time transactions not shown on the dashboard, you can manually add them to have a complete view of your finances.
All you have to do is create an account, set up your rental properties, and invite your tenants to join Avail. Once you collect rental payments and log maintenance expenses, your dashboard will sync all existing transactions to your dashboard.
