Howdy All,
Maintenance is fun, so are property inspections. By fun, I mean costly, time consuming, a pain to coordinate, and overall a headache most people don't want to deal with. So why not outsource it to us? We're also creating a database for asset management, so we can proactively plan replacements, and help owners accurately forecast their costs of their most expensive appliances!
Background
The original idea behind my plan came from my years at Air Movers, Inc. out of Springfield,VA. We had a commercial building owner, who paid annually for an HVAC inspection of all 78 of his buildings, while his leases were Triple-net, HVAC is often a part of the base building, and is the SINGLE MOST EXPENSIVE APPLIANCE in any home or business. If everything came back as well maintained, he footed the bill. If anything came back as not maintained or needing repaired, he back billed the tenants. It was genius, a surefire way to make sure that his investment was being maintained by the tenants.
I often wondered to myself, why don't residential property managers do this? Why don't they log assets like the commercial folks do, with models, and serials, and ages, for all appliances? Why don't we check the smoke detectors too? and bath fans, and water heaters?
From many talks with y'all it sounds like it came down to software. Three years ago, I crafted the first tenant Safe-T inspection. I had 3 clients who went for it, but it didn't go well for the first 2 years. I didn't have the infrastructure or the back end to maintain it. Nor the man power. it simply became a headache, and shelved to the back burner.
Many of you know my story of being a WA transplant, and refrigeration engineer, who began a GC company 5 years ago, working ONLY for Real Estate Professionals, running service calls, installing systems (admittedly it's the bulk of what we currently do). Three years ago, I changed the company over to Tacoma Furnace Company, an SEO engineered name, and began putting systems in place to focus more on my passion, HVAC (and RE, on the side). I've installed almost 2500 systems in Washington State, I've expanded roles to include an admin, and a few teams so we can accomplish tasks more easily. For the last several months, I've been working on a database solution to solve our software issue. I've been running service calls, and training up someone to handle the load of maintenance that I've been planning to come our way.
So here's what I came up with:
A 2 tiered Property Management SAFE-T(enant) inspection plan.
A google form to load our inspection data
Our custom database I created (that's reinforced to 2- separate backup RAID systems). We're working on a single point solution so myself, or a maintenance tech can smoothly upload data from a form to the database, to be emailed right to you.
A few key notes, as all of the important bits are in the docs:
We're moving to a monthly subscription cost, it's how you bill, it's how you get paid, and if you break the cost down monthly it's cheap ($20/door)
We would like to see 100 doors to start at a discounted rate, and we'd like to add in lots of 25, that way I have time to update the back-end system
We've added a new truck! and a dedicated maintenance personnel to perform these inspections, with over a decade in the HVAC/remodel industry, our technician Brandon has all the skills needed to perform the maintenance. I will also personally pinch hit, and perform inspections and maintenance as needed.
We added a Second option, specifically for those of you who do NOT want to do property inspections yourselves, we can do this when we do the SAFE-T inspection, for an increased cost, we are happy to provide pictures in a google photos folder, documenting a general condition of the property as well as a list of tenant needs, or maintenance requests.
The basics: we're changing out the batteries ANNUALLY in smokes, CO's. Draining the water heaters, checking the appliances for function, and logging the asset data. Checking over the furnace or heat source.
What it nets you: -You send us your homes and tenant info, WE will schedule. less headache and man power on your end. -A lower cost for you AND your homeowners for maintenance -Asset management data, and a heads up on upcoming appliance repairs needed -An easy monthly billing solution, with maintenance billed 30 days in arrears. -Reduced costs on your maintenance and service (but feel free to bill it out to the owners how you like)
This plan can also be used for your Airbnb's
This also provides you with a certificate of maintenance for sale (all those home inspectors writing unit to be serviced by licensed technician)
Above is a look at our database form and below you will find copies of our google form for uploading our data (redundancy in case my NAS, and server go out), and a write-up with even more information. When you are ready to start beginning talks, go to this form and fill it out. You will need to scroll to the bottom of the page to reach it. Either I or Kate, my Operations Manager, will be in touch.
Let me know if there are any questions I can answer, or if there is anything you'd like to see streamlined into your contracts.
THANKS!
Jonathan Nylen
Tacoma Furnace Co | Owner/Operator Phone: 571-205-5422
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