The Revolving Maintenance Tech Door and How to Close It
Why are all the good maintenance technicians leaving?
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
I’m in the multifamily industry in St. Louis and have been for almost 30 years. It seems we have an ongoing, common issue with getting and keeping good maintenance techs. With so many property management companies losing and needing great maintenance techs, I posed the question on our Facebook page as to why good techs are leaving and the common answer was wages. They can make more with their own business or in commercial construction jobs and also avoid the issues with being on call. So, I did some math.
If the average rent is $900 per month and you lose just six residents a year due to poor maintenance, that’s a minimum of $5400.00 in vacancy loss if the apartment sits vacant for just 30 days. Now add in the wages paid to maintenance, contractors and leasing to turn and re-lease the units and the utility costs management will have to pay during this time, also any inspection fees. So, let’s add in another $500.00 per unit. Now we’re at $8400.00 for the six units we lost due to poor maintenance. And these number are conservative. In all likelihood it will be much more.
