Outdoor Maintenance Services for Property Managers

Outdoor maintenance services do more than keep your properties looking good—they can reduce legal risk and even open up new revenue opportunities. Whether you’re just getting started as a property manager or you’ve decided to add a few new outdoor maintenance services to your roster, here’s your guide on how to make it happen in a way that makes sense for both you and your tenants.

Why Outdoor Maintenance Services Matter for Your Rental Properties

Some property managers may be skeptical about adding rental property outdoor maintenance services to their roster of offerings because they come with added costs. While that can happen, there are many reasons why you’d want to consider investing in them, including:

• Safety: Making outdoor maintenance tasks your tenants’ responsibility could become a liability. For example, one tenant could slip and fall on a patch of ice that another tenant left unsalted on a snowy day. However, if you take matters into your own hands, you can take care of essential maintenance tasks in a timely manner and reduce your exposure to risk.
• Property value: Curb appeal is one of the most significant factors that’s considered when calculating property values. If you invest in the right rental property outdoor maintenance services, you can rest assured that the exterior appearance of the properties in your portfolio will help boost their value.
• Tenant satisfaction: It should come as no surprise that tenants like coming home to properties that look well-maintained from the outside. Any investment you make into exterior maintenance services can help boost overall tenant satisfaction and may even result in more positive reviews and longer tenancies.
• Additional revenue generation: You don’t have to cover the full cost of outdoor maintenance on your own. Many property managers pass these expenses to tenants—turning routine upkeep into a revenue stream.

Outdoor Maintenance Services Every Property Should Offer

For most portfolios, outdoor maintenance services are just one component of rental property maintenance management. Still, it’s important to take a holistic look at all of the services you should consider offering to stay competitive and compliant. Typically, these tasks will fall into three buckets:

• Landscaping and lawn care services: Lawn mowing, weed control, flower bed and yard cleanup, mulch refresh, irrigation system maintenance, landscape design
• Exterior maintenance: Roof inspections and repair, siding and window maintenance, gutter cleaning, deck and patio maintenance, driveway and parking lot maintenance, exterior painting, outdoor lighting maintenance, and pest control
• Seasonal work: Insulating exterior pipes and clearing walkways of snow and ice (winter), repairing winter damage and introducing new plantings (spring), trimming trees and maintaining landscaping (summer), and removing fallen leaves and winterizing (fall)

How to Assess the Outdoor Maintenance Needs of Your Properties

No two properties need the exact same upkeep. Before you commit to specific services or providers, it’s worth taking a step back to evaluate what’s working, what’s missing, and where you can make the biggest impact. Here’s how:

• Perform an audit: Start by looking at your invoices from outdoor maintenance service providers that you’ve hired in the past to get a sense of where you currently stand. Then, inspect the properties you manage to assess the condition of their exteriors. Think about which services you’ll want to keep in place, switch, or add on to your roster.
• Document your findings: Be sure to maintain detailed records of your findings, including notes and photos of any issues, as well as documentation on any services where you are pleased with the results.
• Create a maintenance schedule and budget: Use the findings from your outdoor maintenance audit to develop a comprehensive maintenance schedule for your properties (more on that below). Alongside the schedule, be sure to create a budget for new or existing outdoor maintenance tasks that you plan to take on.

Creating a Maintenance Schedule for Your Rental Properties

Every rental property’s maintenance schedule is going to look unique. However, if you are building a schedule from the ground up, consider using the following categories as a framework to help you get started.

Pro tip: Manage HOAs? Check out our post on Creating Effective HOA Maintenance Schedules

Urgent Maintenance Tasks

As the name suggests, this category should include the maintenance tasks that are your first priority to address. These tasks are typically safety issues or any glaring gaps that you found during your outdoor maintenance audit.

Logging these as maintenance requests in your go-to property management software can be a smart way to address these requests quickly with real-time records that keeps vendors responsible.

Ongoing Maintenance Tasks

Tasks in this category are things that need to be regular fixtures on your property maintenance checklist, such as pest control or yard cleanup. For these jobs, be sure to define how frequently they need to be taken care of and identify some approximate dates for when the maintenance should take place.

Preventive Maintenance Tasks

Preventive maintenance tasks aren’t meant to address a current maintenance issue. Instead, they are done in order to prevent a future maintenance issue from occurring, especially ones that may end up being difficult or costly to fix if left unattended.

This category should include tasks like cleaning your property’s HVAC units and changing their air filters. Again, you’ll want to document the frequency of maintenance and when it should happen during the year.

Seasonal Maintenance Tasks

Seasonal maintenance tasks can look very different depending on where your rental properties are located. For example, if the climate gets colder in the winter, you’ll likely want to hire someone to shovel snow and salt any walking paths. Alternatively, if it gets warm in the summer, you may be more likely to need pool care or assistance watering outdoor plants consistently.

It’s simply about making sure that you have providers on call for when your seasonal needs occur. It may be a good idea to scope out what services some of your competitors are offering and try to match them.

To help with these seasonal maintenance tasks, take a look at our checklists below:

Choosing the Right Outdoor Maintenance Service Providers

Once you have your maintenance schedule in place, the next step is to determine whether you have the capacity to handle these tasks in-house or if you need to outsource them to third-party vendors. Here are a few factors to weigh when making your decision.

• Equipment: Consider whether any specialized equipment is needed to complete the task and if you already have it on hand or if you would need to purchase it. Typically, smaller and more frequently used items—such as mowers and trimmers—may be worth purchasing. Less run-of-the-mill equipment may be worth calling a professional.
• Training: Think about whether any specific training is required to handle the tasks safely, and if anyone on your team has that knowledge. Tasks such as plumbing or electrical work are usually best left to credentialed professionals.
• Frequency: Look into how often each maintenance task needs to be performed. Then, compare the cost of hiring a professional versus taking a DIY approach over time.

Coordinating Outdoor Maintenance Services with Your Tenants

After you’ve created a solid plan for how you intend to handle your rental property outdoor maintenance services, it’s important to communicate your maintenance plan to your tenants. You don’t have to communicate the whole plan at one time, but follow these tips to ensure that everyone feels informed.

• Communicate early: As soon as you get a particular maintenance service on the schedule, let your tenants know. Be sure to include details about when the service will take place, what to expect, and how long the interruption will last.
• Communicate often: Do your best to send multiple reminders about upcoming maintenance services.
• Use multiple communication channels: The best way to ensure your message reaches all your tenants is to use multiple channels of communication. Send a mix of text messages and email reminders, as well as posting the information on a tenant portal if your property management software offers that feature.

Creating New Revenue Streams with Outdoor Maintenance Services

Finally, you may want to consider ways to add on additional revenue streams with your outdoor maintenance services. If you’re thinking about going this route, here are some things to consider:

• Safety: Most of the time, safety-oriented services—such as salting walkways in the winter—are not optional. You can choose to bill these services as pass-through costs to your tenants.
• Amenities: If there are elective services that you would like to add to your roster of outdoor maintenance services, such as lawn mowing for single-family units, consider positioning those services as new amenities you’re offering in an effort to make your tenants’ lives easier.
• Bulk contracts: Whenever possible, try to negotiate bulk contracts with third-party vendors that you can trust. That way, you can publicize them to your tenants as a negotiated cost savings.

Tools and Technology to Make Implementing Outdoor Maintenance Services Easy

No matter which outdoor maintenance services you add, managing them gets a lot easier with the right tech. Buildium’s all-in-one platform helps you stay ahead of seasonal tasks, automate most of the ticketing process, manage tickets and vendor relationships more easily, and handle maintenance requests before they turn into bigger issues.

Whether you’re managing 20 units or 200, Buildium makes it easy to keep your properties in top shape—and your tenants happy. You can even tap into Buildium’s 24/7/365, third-party Maintenance Contact Center service and its entire Marketplace of partner integrations to streamline everything from urgent fixes to recurring maintenance.

Ready to make outdoor maintenance simpler? Get started with a 14-day free trial of Buildium or schedule a live demo with a platform guide. Take the next step and you’re on your way to cleaner properties, happier tenants, and fewer to-dos on your plate.

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