A preventive maintenance plan for rental properties

Preventive maintenance is the work you schedule before anything breaks: filter changes, heating and cooling check-ups, alarm tests, gutter cleaning. It is the cheapest maintenance you will do, and the easiest to skip, because nothing is on fire. Skipped long enough, it turns into deferred maintenance and then into a call at night.

This guide builds a plan you can run for a whole portfolio from one calendar. It pairs with the preventive maintenance checklist, which has the tasks season by season. The guide covers the parts the checklist can’t: what to list per property, who owns each task, how to tell tenants and how to keep the record.

1. List what each property has

A plan starts with an inventory. For each property, write down the systems and equipment you are responsible for, with the details a vendor will ask for:

• Heating and cooling: type, make, model, filter size and the date of the last service
• Water heater: gas or electric, tank or tankless, age and location
• Smoke and CO alarms: how many, where, and the manufacture date on each
• Roof, gutters and downspouts, and when the roof was last inspected
• Plumbing: the main water shut-off location, any sump pump and any pipes in unheated spaces
• Appliances you supply, with model numbers
• Dryer vents, fire extinguishers, and anything in common areas

Take a photo of each data plate and the shut-off valves while you are there. The same photos answer the first question a plumber asks at night: where is the shut-off?

2. Turn the checklist into a calendar

Copy the checklist, delete what doesn’t apply to each property and put every task on a calendar with a month. Most tasks fall into a few rhythms:

Book the HVAC visits early. Heating and cooling vendors are busiest at the first cold snap and the first heat wave, which is exactly when a skipped check-up becomes a no-heat or no-cooling call. Turnovers are a good time to catch up, so add the plan to your make-ready checklist.

3. Give every task an owner

A task without a name on it doesn’t happen. For each line on the calendar, decide who does it and who checks it was done:

• Your in-house technicians take the recurring, quick tasks: filters, alarm tests, leak checks. If you have them, they should get these first. See in-house technicians or vendors.
• Vendors take the licensed and seasonal work: HVAC check-ups, roof inspections, dryer vent cleaning. Book them with the same job offer you use for repairs, with a scope of work and a spend limit.
• Tenants can do a few things, like reporting a chirping alarm or a filter that looks dirty. Write those into the lease or move-in packet, and don’t rely on them for anything safety-critical.

Treat each visit as a work order, with the same stages as a repair: offered, booked, visited and confirmed. The work order process applies unchanged.

4. Tell tenants before you come in

Preventive visits are scheduled, so give tenants the full notice your state and lease require. Send the date, the time window, who is coming and what they will do. The tenant text messages template has a visit notice to adapt, and notice of entry explains the general rule. Group visits by building where you can, so tenants see one visit instead of three.

5. Budget for it

Talk to each property owner about preventive work before the year starts. Agree which tasks are routine and fall under their approval limit, and which need a quote first. Many owners keep a maintenance reserve for this. A written plan with dates and rough scope makes the conversation easier than an invoice that arrives with no warning.

6. Keep the record

Record each visit on the property: the date, who came, what they did, what they found and any photos. The record does three jobs. It tells the next person what was done and when. It shows a property owner what their money bought. And when something does fail, it shows whether the last service was on time.

When a visit finds a problem

Open a separate work order for the repair, linked to the visit. Keep the preventive task on its schedule. A check-up that finds a cracked heat exchanger is a success, as long as the repair gets its own owner and date.

A one-hour start for this month

1. Pick your five properties with the most work orders last year.
2. Fill in the inventory for each one, starting with heating, water heaters and alarms.
3. Copy the checklist and put the next three months of tasks on a calendar.
4. Name an owner for each task and send the first vendor job offers.
5. Add the rest of the portfolio, five properties at a time.

Track whether the plan is working with the same numbers you use for repairs. Fewer emergencies in the first cold month and fewer repeat repairs are the signs to look for. The maintenance KPIs guide defines how to count them.

Where Now Ours fits

Ours offers each job to your own technicians first, then to your vendors if nobody is free, by text or in the vendor app, in your company’s name. It books the visit with the tenant and the vendor or technician, and every message and booking is recorded on the case. On Cautious, the default, it asks you before it picks a vendor or spends money. You decide what goes on the calendar.