Spring is upon us, and now is the time for your condo association to make sure that your maintenance program is on track. As brutal as Florida weather can be, you certainly don’t want to discover a leak in your roof during a torrential downpour or have the HVAC unit stop working in the middle of a record heatwave. Unfortunately, these crisis situations occur all too often because many associations neglect to develop a preventative maintenance plan. Instead, they favor a reactive approach to maintenance, i.e., waiting until something breaks or fails before deciding to repair or replace it.
Ironically, reactive maintenance is actually about three to nine times more expensive in the long run than proactive maintenance. So, it’s actually much more cost-effective to be proactive, even if that means investing a bit of time and money upfront. In this brief article, we describe everything you need to do in order to create a highly-effective preventative maintenance plan. For more information, please get in touch with one of the top St. Petersburg condo management companies — Wise Property Management.
Related: Spring Maintenance Tips for Condo Properties
Collect All Maintenance-Related Information
For most condominium associations, maintenance information is scattered across a wide variety of documents. The first step in creating a preventative maintenance plan is to locate and consolidate all of this information, including:
- Your condominium association’s maintenance policy, typically found in your governing documents
- Maintenance requirements to keep warranties valid
- Maintenance recommendations located in owner’s manuals
- Anticipated costs and timeframes for replacing equipment or making major repairs to components, as outlined in your reserve study
Identify Which Elements of Your Community Require Maintenance
Once you’ve collected all maintenance-related information, it’s time to make a comprehensive list of all the equipment and components that need to be included in your maintenance plan. Generally speaking, this can be easily accomplished by reviewing your governing documents, reserve study, and vendor/maintenance contracts. The goal of preventative maintenance is always to make sure that each of these elements reaches its estimated useful life.
Related: How Good Maintenance Practices Can Improve Tenant Acquisition and Retention
Create a Maintenance Schedule
Reserve studies account for planned repairs, construction projects, maintenance costs, replacements of common area facilities, and more. As such, your reserve study will also indicate the maintenance schedule you should follow for each item it contains. In the event that the maintenance schedule for a particular item is missing from the reserve study, there are a few steps you can take. We recommend asking the manufacturer or contractor or checking your warranties or owner manuals for information regarding the recommended maintenance frequency.
Enlist the Help of an Experienced Professional
Last but certainly not least, it’s important to enlist the assistance of a St. Petersburg condo management company like Wise Property Management. A great property management company will be able to provide a wealth of information regarding maintenance and help you create a highly-effective preventative maintenance plan. They may also be able to refer you to a competent engineer who understands the unique needs of your condo association, if necessary.
Are you ready to work with one of the top St. Petersburg condo management companies that makes life easier for you and your fellow board members and improves the value of your property? If so, submit our proposal request form today!