Topic: Residents insist on appointment to enter apartment home for maint. request

Seems like we have had a lot more of these lately, and they negatively impact the productivity of our folks, missed appointments, having to leave one to be on time to another, I am inclined to quit this practice, but know I 'll face "blowback" from the residents...any ideas of how others do it? Thanks so much! Jim Stewart

Because most of our tenants are military, we know that we have many that work evenings or the overnight shift. They are the only ones we will make appointments for. Our tenants are told in advance that when they request a maintenance repair that we will require them to sign a Permission to Enter form. That form allows us to enter their home when they are not home on OUR schedule. Mostly because I have only ONE maintenance person and he's only here for 4 hours a day. Thankfully, I am a small complex.

Its in our lease when you put in a maintenance request it gives permission to enter. All maintenance has to be in some form of writing(email, note left at the office, text) unless its an emergency. Nine times out of ten if they all of a sudden want appointments made and this is not the usual practice they are hiding something(unauthorized pet, occupant, condition of the unit, drug use something of that nature). Usually when tenants are demanding the office works around their schedule its a red flag for something somewhere. Explain to them this slows the progress down and because of that maintenance cannot make appointments for requests, usually they will slip up and give you some type of hint to whats going on when they fuss about it. When my residents start demanding things like this i sometimes send out a quick memo reminding them of the pet policy, occupant policy, no drug tolerance policy, maintenance request policy etc. Make it sound like i already know the offenders but giving them a chance to make it right before i take action and some of them will either ask questions that clue into what they are up to and what needs to be watched for or will start the process to clean up the hidden issue. We only allow appointments for things like this on a very minimal basis ( for example an older lady who lives by herself and moved to the complex because her previous unit was broken into and is now skeptical of everyone and everything) even then its not an appointment set just a notice that lets her know on such and such day someone will be entering your unit to work on your request.

Hello,

If the resident insists on being home, what I do is give residents a time frame of when maintenance can enter the unit and complete the request. Being that I have a small complex as well with only one maintenance tech, it just makes sense for us to work this way. Residents have learned to work with management regarding this. It can definitely be annoying!

We only offer a timeframe to avoid this issue, either (AM 8am-noon) or (PM noon to 5pm). This gives our team a large window of time to complete the request. We are always sure to tell the resident requesting either of these options that emergencies do take priority.

There are affordable solutions that streamline the process while helping both the resident and maintenance staff with this. PM me to discuss.

We don't set appointment times for residents because more often than not, the resident misses their appointment. What we have begun doing is offering a window of time that maintenance will come by if a resident insists on an appointment, between 9am-12pm or 1pm-4pm are the options. Most contract services never offer an exact time anyway because it's difficult to predict how long certain jobs, or work orders in our industry, will take and it is customary to instead offer a time frame for arrival. This helps the resident to plan, but also gives our maintenance guys a little flexibility if a work order is taking longer than expected.

Our state laws require that we obtain their permission to enter so they have every right to request to be present. We do our best to accommodate but we now do as the cable guy does and give them a 4 hour window. It also helps if you explain when receiving the request that they do not need to be present and they will get serviced quicker if they authorize us to enter whenever the team has first opportunity. We always leave a door tag letting them know the work status or its completion.

We allow them he opportunity to schedule an appointment, if they have requested one, but if they make an appointment and don't keep it, very often, we will issue a 24-hour notice of scheduled maintenance and then complete the work on our schedule.