Help reduce rental property maintenance costs with tech support

What is tech support costing you in rental property maintenance?

A few weeks ago, I spoke with GlobeSt. about the growing need for simplicity in rental property operations. But there’s a big difference between wanting simpler workflows and actually implementing those that make a difference in terms of revenue and profitability.

One area of focus we’ve researched at Assurant is the relationship between rental property maintenance costs, high-tech amenities, and resident satisfaction. Rental properties can attract and retain residents by offering modern amenities such as high-speed Wi-Fi, smart home devices, security systems, and mobile property management apps. In fact, our research indicates that 56% of potential renters consider the availability of a connected ecosystem when choosing between similar communities.¹

But the competitive advantage of attractive amenities means little if it doesn’t lead to bottom-line profitability, especially if those same amenities are adding to your maintenance workload instead of streamlining your property management budgets. Here’s how to check if tech support is secretly increasing your rental property maintenance costs.

Start with a tech support maintenance audit.

Count up the total number of maintenance calls you get in a month. If possible, collect data across at least three to four months so you can get an average number.

Next, see how many of those maintenance calls were for tech support-related issues only. This could be anything from helping a resident set up a digital home thermostat, to questions about smart home appliances, Wi-Fi set up, mobile device key card access, and more. If you’re finding that 20% or more of your total maintenance volume is for tech support-related calls, that could be a sign that your maintenance teams are spending too much time on tech support.

Calculate your actual tech support maintenance costs.

One of the sneaky ways tech support impacts rental property maintenance budgets is how quickly (or slowly) it takes maintenance teams to solve the issue. To get a realistic idea of actual costs, you’ll need to consider the following.

1. If you’re already tracking how long (in terms of hours) it takes for each maintenance request, do a second audit to find out the percentage of monthly hours related to tech support calls. You may be surprised to find that number is even higher than your overall calls percentage.
2. What are your “hard” costs? If you pay your maintenance teams an hourly wage, simply multiply that rate by hours your teams have devoted to tech support calls.
3. If your team is salaried, break that number down by the number of days/hours they work in a month, and then perform the hourly calculation.

Factor in your other tech support property maintenance costs.

In addition to hard costs, there are two other ways tech support can become a drain on rental property maintenance budget.

1. Tech support resolution rates: Did a specific tech-related maintenance request need multiple visits? Did your team have to call in outside support (perhaps even at an additional expense)? Did your resident pay for an outside repair and then want to be reimbursed?
2. If the answer is yes to any or all of the above, you’re likely missing some opportunities to optimize your property maintenance budget.

Opportunity costs: Ask yourself what important property maintenance tasks were either unfinished or delayed because maintenance staff was preoccupied with tech support requests. This may be slightly more difficult to calculate in terms of numbers, but it’s still an important measure of how much tech support is costing your rental property.

Bringing in additional maintenance staff, fines related to inadequate maintenance, and resident complaints about non-technology-related issues all fall into this category.

Help protect your bottom line with a tech support solution that demands less of your property maintenance team.

Considering that the National Apartment Association estimates the cost of losing residents to be about $4,000 per unit, it’s clearly important that rental property managers deliver appropriate tech support for the high-tech amenities their properties offer. But that doesn’t mean it should literally come at the expense of running a profitable rental property operation.
Self-service and on-demand tech support options can help alleviate tech-related maintenance bloat while also providing more timely resolution to residents than in-person maintenance teams are typically qualified to offer. What’s more, our research shows that 81% of residents would use such a service for a nominal fee, and 88% would do so if included as part of their lease agreements.<sup>1

¹</sup>Assurant Personal TechPro℠ Research, 2024