[0:00]Hey Chicago investors, maintenance. Now, I know I tell people I'm a property manager, but at the end of the day, a majority of property management ends up being maintenance. And the maintenance has to be done to your Chicago properties is considerable compared to even other parts of the country.
[0:14]Hi, I'm Mark Hanley, founder, partner, GC realty development, and also co-host of Chicago's number one real estate investing podcast, straight up Chicago investor. Check that out.
[0:23]But today I want to talk to you about maintenance and maintenance is such a crucial thing when it comes to the resident experience. Now, you've heard me talk in the past about, you know, do everything you can to avoid maintenance and get the stuff done during the turnover process prior to a tenant moving in and that that helps uh avoid putting the tenant through the maintenance process, where if they just have quiet enjoyment, they'll they'll no complaints and they could always say that uh there's no maintenance in my place, it's awesome and and they could be that much happier.
[0:50]But maintenance is going to happen, especially, I told you already, you know, we're dealing with these 120-year-old homes here in Chicago and and I believe 60% of the uh housing stock is older than 1960, which that that's pretty old in itself uh these days now that uh we're 1920 or we're in 2026.
[1:06]But that being said, maintenance is going to come up, no matter what, no matter how preventive you are, you're still going to have stuff. And what's probably crucial is you understanding the time frame of how fast it should take you to get things done.
[1:17]Now, what we did is we took the last 20 uh we took the last 12 months uh of maintenance and what we did was we put it through to see really what our average time was broken down by the the different type of uh work orders.
[1:31]So we broke it down to anything from general handyman to appliances, pest control, painting, flooring, cleaning, Hvac, uh Locksmith. So we broke it down and we figured out month by month even, uh what the average time it was to take a work order in that category to get done.
[1:47]And I I guess I wasn't that surprised when it really broke down, but really what I was looking at was uh the a lot of this work, you know, you think about uh just a small work order, a door falls off a hinge, like it doesn't take long.
[2:00]The time it takes to get a hold of somebody to go to your property, and then they have time on their schedule to get out to your property, maybe they have to coordinate with the tenant, that's what really takes uh a lot of the time.
[2:10]So, uh, you know, we were looking at our numbers, um, and, uh, to no surprise, uh, stuff like cleaning, uh, uh, that that was pretty quick, it's only a couple day average.
[2:18]Hvac, locksmith, plumbing, those were only two or three day averages. Now, those tend to be emergencies, right? You know, people aren't usually calling up saying, hey, how about you just clean my my furnace?
[2:29]They're usually ends up being a uh a total something's wrong, heat's not working, AC's not working, we got to get someone out there, ASAP. So in heat or leaks, um, or, you know, someone broke in, I got to change my locks. Those are all emergency situations where you're actually working within hours, not so much necessarily uh days or weeks.
[2:46]So, uh, you know, those things came in, uh, at no surprise of two or three days. Uh, you know, handyman general work, you know, came in at five days and I I think that came in probably for us is we like to group work orders together geographically.
[2:57]You know, we have a lot of properties clustered in different parts of the city and suburbs, so we'll send people uh depending on how urgent it is or if we're going to be there already doing something else, we might do something. So, we're averaging about five days for that.
[3:08]Appliances were six days. And when I looked at this, um, it was like 50% of the appliance repairs.
[3:12]Now, this is not replacement of appliances. We're not calling up BVT and six days and get it delivered, but they do do pretty good job.
[3:20]They usually could do it with uh right around uh six, seven, eight days. But appliance repairs and and it was a majority of these required parts.
[3:27]So, guy might have got out there day one or day two, but he had to order a part or go pick up a part and then uh come back. So, uh appliances was right around uh six days for those repairs.
[3:35]Pest control, seven days, and when we looked into that, uh it ended up being a lot of call backs.
[3:40]Um, it's like, hey, let's go out there and treat it, let's go back uh five, six days later, make sure it's working or let's go set a trap and let's come back and make sure to see if uh anything was caught in that trap.
[3:50]Um, but the two longest ones for us, uh and again, I don't think any of this was a surprise, but uh really I just want to share with everybody kind of the mindset around the different issues that come up and the potential time frame.
[4:00]So, painting and flooring, uh, you know, painting ended up being about eight days. Now, I should have said this in the beginning, but what was excluded from this, this was no turnover work and this was no routine maintenance.
[4:14]So, I didn't put the 1200 HVC cleanings that we do in the system or the 300, 400 gutters that we clean out.
[4:20]Like, that all that routine, scheduled, um, uh, recurring work orders was not part of this plan. And similar painting, this was not turnover, but it still took eight days.
[4:29]And and I think, uh, painting is very clear to me why it took eight days, because, you know, sometimes these projects take two or three days if we're doing something or, you know, there's usually a timeline if a guy's got two or three jobs booked and he has to put you in order, you might be nine or 10 or 12 days out from getting the guy out there.
[4:44]And this painting's usually not an urgent matter either. So, uh, and then last but not least, uh, the longest time frame was flooring.
[4:50]And uh, thing I saw about flooring was, uh, a lot of times you're trying to you're taking time trying to match the right product or you have to special order the matching product.
[5:01]So, a lot of times is lead time. And then also again, flooring could take, uh, a couple of days and, uh, those guys, uh, that are doing that work, they might, uh, be booked out a week or a week and a half. So, we were 14 days as far as getting flooring done.
[5:11]That was our highest number. So, uh, keep this in mind though. So, all of these things, uh, we're we're getting these things done in two, three days, uh, you know, five days for just your general maintenance.
[5:21]Um, but we have a whole system in place. And if you're a self-managing landlord or you're you're thinking about being a, uh, landlord, what's super important is to understand who to call when you have a problem.
[5:31]Um, and it might just be one guy. I have tons of guys that, uh, I know over the last 20 years that I'm their one guy and, uh, they call me whenever they need something, I simply chat, uh, text over, uh, who my contact is, who I would call in that situation or tell them what I would do and they do that. So, or there's other guys I know that have an entire rolodex of every single problem that can come up, they got a guy they know who to call.
[5:54]And that's that's good. That's that's good too, just so you have a system. But then there's a lot of people that just don't have a system. And I'll have people call me up and say, like, yeah, this was leaking. It's been about two, three weeks, I just didn't know who to call.
[6:03]I called the first guy, his price seemed high. Now, when you have a leak, it's not the time to go figure out all the due diligence. You want to make sure you have somebody.
[6:09]And and all reality, you might just have to, if you don't have somebody lined up and something goes wrong, you might just have to overpay to prevent further damage or keep that tenant happy.
[6:19]You a lot of times uh problems that go unsolved turn into bigger problems or ultimately it just uh has a festering in the tenant of uh maybe how crappy of a landlord they feel you are.
[6:27]And and that can affect your renewal rate as well too. You guys hear me talk about all the time, lease renewal and and getting tenants to stay, that's ultimately how us as landlords and housing providers we make money is the longer someone's in there, turnover is super expensive. So, um, in the mind of the tenant, if you're knocking these things out in a few days, uh and being super communicative around that, that's a whole other subject when it comes to maintenance.
[6:49]Uh so, I heard I heard a phrase recently, it was uh maintenance is easy.
[6:53]It's communicating to all parties, the expectations is the difficult part. So, maybe take that for what that is uh as well too in this conversation.
[6:59]So, if you have any questions, you ever need help with a specific maintenance issue, feel free to reach out to me. If you don't want to go out this alone, if you've maybe you're like, I don't want to do this, I don't want to build a network, I don't want to have to find a guy, uh we could always help you as well too. We do tenant placement, but more so for this topic here today, we do full service management. So, if we get ever help you, we do management all around the Chicago market.
[7:18]Uh always here to help you, otherwise, we'll talk to you soon.
