Leasing Season, Biggest Team event of the Year
Every year each property has their leasing season most of time this season is during the summer maybe starting a couple months prior to and tapering off a couple months after, the lengths sometime differ according to your area.
The leasing team and the maintenance team need to work together and understand each other’s role or this leasing season could be a disastrous season for your community. Everyone needs to understand that there is so many different places in the social media world for people to give a rating and everyone listens to what they hear. From the time a new prospect walks in your door your property, leasing and maintenance teams are being evaluated. And sometimes the prospect may be a pro shopper hired by your management company to test any and every part of the leasing process to ensure everyone is trained to handle and give every new resident the best experience they can.
Sometimes the property and service managers need to sit down with the team to remind everyone of their roles and how they are there to work together to make every new lease a quality move in. During this meeting everyone should take a minute to explain how they contribute to the team and give any ideas that will help the team work together better and more efficiently. Every maintenance team always seems to get the heavy end of the work load, but this is what we always do the "heavy lifting" to get the job done. “Work Smarter, Not Harder” is not just a Maintenance911.com motto everyone could use in their daily routine but a motto that if used in every detail of your job you will find that make readies, work orders, property walks even shop clean up go faster, better and help you have a greater pride in your performance every day. When you take more pride in you, you will find that you will take more pride in everything you do and you will see way to make all your work quality work.
As the service manager or the maintenance supervisor you may need to recruit other turnkey companies. If you have this need or if it is in your budget it could help you and increase your move in’s on time not fall behind on other work needs. There’s never a good answer to keeping costs down and getting your occupancy level up, but it may help you to balance it out so you’re not over budget and below your occupancy mark. This is where weekly meetings come in and really play a big part to help the whole team come together as one so everyone can see how it works and the necessity to bring your occupancy level up and keep the team together and happy.
Here at Maintenance911.com we have all been through many leasing seasons, they are never easy but always come to end before you know it. Leasing season is very important so that you keep people coming in and signing new leases so that you don’t end up with a lot of vacancies in the winter. Maintenance always has work to do, specifically if you are walking your property with an open eye for preventive and corrective maintenance (that’s another article). What I am saying is that get your vacant units ready as far ahead of move in date as possible but don’t cut corners to get there this will always come back to bite you in the ass. Come to work put in good hard work, learn to do your job safely, efficiently and correct and you will be able to move ahead and control your maintenance destiny. If you go into a unit and check every item in that unit and use corrective or preventive maintenance and finish detail to complete that make ready you will have very few if any callbacks. Most maintenance team members receive bonuses for lease renewals not new leases so it is to you the maintenance person to make every unit the best you can, if you find that it is hard for you to complete a quality job talk to your supervisor about it. This again is where you can make your job easier by giving your supervisor list of missing parts, parts that can make your job easier or even a list of ideas that can be implemented if beneficial to the job. Everyone can help and we are all part of the team, so let’s “Work Smarter, Not Harder”.
