Rental Property Owner’s Spring Checklist

When spring finally rolls around, it can be time to start your yearly upkeep duties as a landlord. Without the winter snow, you can take care of various exterior components of your rental units with ease to ensure they stay in good condition.

You’ll want to check out all of the components below during the fair weather spring months before you end up in those extremely hot summer months doing work while sweating like crazy.

Test All Air Conditioning Units

Nothing is worse than getting a phone call from your tenants that the air conditioning units are not working when it’s extremely hot outside. To help prevent this problem as best as you can, you should test out all of the air conditioning units at your properties to verify that they’re working. If there are any issues, you should think about hiring commercial AC repair for your rental property as they’ll be able to properly fix the issue before summer rolls around.

Landscaping

Keeping your units looking good keeps tenants renting them. Investing a little money in creating a beautiful landscape that tenants are proud to call their home can do wonders for your tenant retention. You can opt for hiring a professional landscaping company or doing the work yourself. It will likely depend on your budget and the size of the property. Be sure to pick plants that are low maintenance and drought-resistant as you don’t want to waste money on plants that die due to lack of care. Also, this is the perfect time of year to start fertilizing the lawn to make sure it comes up looking luscious.

Painting

Spring is the best time of the year to touch up that exterior paint on your rental units. Since curb appeal is a big factor when it comes to getting tenants interested in your property, you’ll need to consider how the exterior of the unit looks. Painting can typically be completed in one to two days, depending on the number of units that you have. You’ll want to paint in the spring to avoid the blistering of paint in the summer heat.

Have Exterior Pest Prevention Completed

Ensure that your rental units stay free from pests and the damage they can create is essential to properly maintain your property. You’ll want to speak with your local pest treatment company to get your annual pest treatments taken care of. Many will spray pesticide to the exterior of the building and do a visual inspection of the units to check for potential signs of existing pest damage.

Clean Out Gutters

The fall and winter months can wreak havoc on the gutters at your rental property. The spring months are the perfect time to clear out that loose debris in the gutters. This will ensure that the gutters remain working correctly. If you don’t clean out the gutters at your rental units, it could lead to rainwater getting backed up on the roof of your home. This could create damage to the exterior of your home which can be costly to repair.

Put New Batteries in Smoke Detectors

Having smoke detectors in your rental units is a must. However, they’re no good unless they have fresh batteries to power them. You’ll want to change out the batteries in the smoke detectors at the beginning of every spring to ensure they’re getting replaced. Also, you’ll want to replace the batteries in carbon monoxide detectors as well to ensure that they stay working correctly.