Fall— it’s the best season to perform regular maintenance on some of the hardest-working devices in your rental property. By taking advantage of this season to do important interior maintenance items, you’re really also preparing your property to run safely and smoothly all winter long. You can have your filters, batteries, and water heaters checked and cleaned or replaced. These things need to be done regularly to keep your tenants safe and your rental property operating in optimum condition.
It’s important that your Sugarland rental property’s air filters be changed regularly. These filters keep your property’s HVAC system clean and running efficiently. Because of this, changing the air filters in your rental home is an important part of seasonal maintenance. As the winter months draw near, and people choose to stay indoors more, they’d want to keep out the cold. They crank up the heat and the furnaces start working harder. Because of this, it is critical that your filters are kept clean. There are different types of HVAC systems, and some systems use different types of filters. Depending on what filter your system needs, you may need to change the filters as often as every 30 days, every three months, or even every six months. While you may think that having your tenants do these things would be a smart move, the truth is, many tenants would probably forget to do it or not change the filters often enough. This sort of lapse in maintenance will cause strain on your HVAC system, resulting in a reduction of life and the efficiency of the unit.
Fall is also the best season to test and change the batteries in your rental property’s smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. You have to have these devices working well to keep your tenants safe. If you neglect to keep smoke detectors functioning properly, you may get sued should your property be damaged and/or one of your tenants get hurt in a fire. In other words, it’s critical that these devices are cared for.
There are different kinds of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Some have lithium batteries that can last up to ten years— which is ideal since that is also the useful life of a smoke or carbon monoxide detector—while others need to have their batteries changed every six to twelve months. Nevertheless, no matter what kind of battery your devices have, you should still make sure that the batteries are being tested on a regular basis, and replaced immediately when needed. Hundreds of people are injured or killed in house fires every year. This is partly caused by the smoke detectors in their homes failing to alert them in time. If you give this task to your tenant, what guarantee do you have that they would do it? On top of that, they may even damage your property’s smoke detectors as they fiddle with them. This would lead to increased liability on your part and an additional expense to replace the devices.
Then we’ve got one of the most frequently used devices in a rental home— the water heater. Despite being used so much, it’s often forgotten when it’s time to do property maintenance tasks. It shouldn’t be neglected or forgotten. Cleaning your property’s water heater is important to keep it working efficiently. Over time, sediment builds up in the tank of a water heater, making it less efficient and even leading to clogged water lines.
You can stay clear of these problems by simply flushing your water heater once every six months or so. It may take a while to get it done, but it’s important to still do it. It’s how you can get the most out of your expensive water heater unit. This may seem like another thing you’d want your tenant to do. But if you let them clean your water heater, you risk a lot of things. They may not do it correctly and cause even more problems.
Neglecting these maintenance items can have serious consequences and you may have to spend more on expensive repairs after a while. But making your tenant do the tasks of changing or cleaning the filters, batteries, and water heaters in your Sugarland rental property is not the best option. While it may be the case that you could spend your time and energy to do the jobs yourself, the best choice would still be to employ a company like Real Property Management Prestige to do all the property maintenance tasks for you. Our full range of maintenance services can free up so much of your time. This way, not only will your property be in good shape and your tenants kept safe, but you would also be able to focus on what matters most. You would now have the time to work on growing your real estate investing business! Contact us today to learn more.
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