Be Winter Ready….

As a real estate investor, we know preventative maintenance is important to you, however sometimes there just isn’t enough hours in the day to complete all of those tasks.

However, preventative maintenance isn’t exactly a task we should be skipping, mainly because these simple tasks have a way of coming back and biting us if they aren’t completed.

Preventative maintenance is something I’ve always placed a high degree of importance on in owning my own rental properties and from there that’s trickled down to our managed clients as well.

We started this program a few years ago when one of our own tenants called us about a water issue in her basement. We were mortified. We thought for sure it was a foundation issue and all we could see is dollar signs. But the fix was really simple. Our eavestroughs were full of leaves and the downspouts were directed towards the house and were seeping into the block foundation. The solution, clean them out and direct the water away from the house.

Since then, we haven’t missed a spring or a fall in doing this preventative maintenance on any of our rentals. Recently other investors have asked us if we wold be able to arrange that for other rentals we have — and now we are.

As part of the preventative maintenance Our Team will ensure the following :

· Clean out all gutters, downspouts and eavestroughs from leaves & debris

· Direct water away from the home

· Turn on/off all outdoor water sources

· Test smoke detectors and C0 detectors as well as change batteries annually

HOW WE STARTED

We started this program a few years ago when one of our own tenants called us about a water issue in her basement. We were mortified. We thought for sure it was a foundation issue and all we could see is dollar signs. But the fix was really simple. Our eavestroughs were full of leaves and the downspouts were directed towards the house and were seeping into the block foundation. The solution, clean them out and direct the water away from the house.

Since then, we haven’t missed a spring or a fall in doing this preventative maintenance on any of our rentals. Recently other investors have asked us if we wold be able to arrange that for other rentals we have — and now we are.

WHY IT MAKES SENSE

If you’re anything like us, water tends to scare us. Water can be a costly expenditure and as an investor can wipe out your entire cash flow you’ve built up. A simple, preventative maintenance program like Spring/Winter Ready can save you thousands of dollars in the future. Take our example above, we thought we had a foundation issue that could’ve cost us upwards of $5,000 when the solutions was a simple fix.

Ensuring your property is winter ready is a small price to pay compared to the alternative. So what are you waiting for? Are you going to get up on that ladder and do this, or should we?