Maintenance Coordination

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How it Works

Coordinating maintenance is a big part of what we do, and is included in our management services.

We hold $300 per property for maintenance (this is either contributed by the owner or held back from first month’s rent). This is your money. It simply sits in our account and is used to cover maintenance expenses between the time we disburse rent  to you and receive the next month’s rent. If you sell your home and stop using our services, this hold is returned to you.

If a maintenance need falls below this threshold, we will authorize it and do our best to make you aware of the situation so you’re not surprised when you see it on your owner statement. If it’s more, then we’ll get your approval beforehand. There are a few exceptions, like if it’s an emergency and we’re unable to get in touch with you.

Just like your primary home, it’s important to have rainy-day funds set aside to cover any unexpected maintenance costs for your rental.

 Can I use my own maintenance person?

While the home is vacant, you’re welcome to coordinate maintenance with whoever you’d like.

Once a home is occupied or we are coordinating maintenance, we use our preferred vendor partners.  These companies have been vetted by us and meet our vendor criteria. Because we already have a relationship with them we know what to expect in terms of timelines, pricing and quality of work completed.  If you have a vendor who you love working with let us know and if they meet our requirements they may be considered as a future preferred vendor.

(We do make exceptions for new builds).

Can I do my own repairs?

If the home is vacant you’re welcome to complete any repairs or maintenance items you’d like. When a home has a resident in it we will use one of our trusted vendor partners to complete any needed work.

Rent-Ready Maintenance

Sometimes when we begin managing a property there’s quite a bit of differed maintenance that needs to be addressed prior to the new residents moving in. In other cases, there may be no maintenance needed.

If there are maintenance items needed to get the home rent-ready, we will coordinate it with the appropriate vendor partners. Here are a few of the things we look for when getting a home rent-ready.

Maintenance Requests

Residents submit maintenance requests through our resident portal or via email. Being responsive to maintenance requests is an important part of creating a positive experience for people living in our rentals. We respond quickly to maintenance requests, and utilize our trusted and vetted vendor partners to address the maintenance needs.

Emergency Maintenance

Emergency Maintenance is when something happens and emergency repair is needed to protect property or people. For example if there’s a water leak at 2AM, we will have a plumber stop the leak and prevent additional damage.

Don’t want to deal with maintenance calls for your property?

That’s why you hire us.

By submitting this form you are authorizing Iron Creek Property Management to use this information to contact you regarding your rental property and share rental market insights with you.

Video Transcript

Rent maintenance, it’s one of the things that almost everyone owner wants to know when they call in when they’re looking for a property manager is how do you handle maintenance. And it’s a great question you should be asking!

I’m Kylie from Iron Creek Property Management. We manage single family homes across the Treasure Valley- Boise, Eagle, Meridian, Star, Kuna, Nampa and Middleton. We focus on transparency, professionalism, and excellent communication. So let’s jump into the maintenance side of things.

First, let’s talk about money. Do we do a maintenance markup for normal maintenance cost and the answer is no. It’s really common in Property Management, a lot of managers do it, they’ll do like a 10% markup or something like that on any invoices. We do not and on that transparency topic we provide you invoices directly from our vendors so you can see within your owner portal exactly how much they charge us which is exactly how much you’re paying out for that expense.

The next thing is the maintenance hold. What type of money do we hold for maintenance. We have a $300 maintenance hold that is your money that sits in our account. And what happens is if there’s a maintenance issue under that $300 threshold, we’re going to take care of it, we’ll give you a heads up so you’re not surprised with your owner statement, but we’re just going to handle it. If it’s over that $300 then we’re going to get your approval prior to authorizing the work. One exception is emergencies. In the case of an emergency (this is all spelled out in the management agreement) but we’re going to do what’s needed to stop the issue from persisting, to stop your property from being damaged or somebody getting hurt. Then connect with you to figure out next steps. So that would be the one time that it would vary from that $300 hold.

The next thing is, can I choose my own vendors? So we have, we’re really lucky, we have a group of vendors they are our Preferred Partners. They’re excellent, they are our go-to people. We have price matched them, we know they’re fair price, we know that they do great work, and that they’re really responsive. A big component of how happy the resident is in a home is how quickly maintenance gets addressed. We really focus on that and the team of vendors that we use are great when it comes to responsiveness. We also are making sure we’re vetting them, making sure that they have everything needed to be sent that home.

If the home is vacant and you want to coordinate your own maintenance with your own vendors you’re more than welcome to. Similarly, if the home is vacant and you want to do the maintenance yourself you are welcome to. Once the tenant goes into a home, once there’s a tenant living there, that’s when we’re going to be using our partners because we’ve vetted them, we know them they have the insurance.

If you have a great maintenance person maybe you’ve worked with them for years, send us their information tell us a little bit about them and we may be able to add them to our preferred vendor list if they meet the qualifications and we have a need for that. But again, we can’t guarantee that that would be who goes out to your home.

That’s how we manage maintenance it’s pretty standard across the board in terms of how managers approach maintenance. If you have any other maintenance questions feel free to give us a call!