We NEED to talk about the current state of unit turns and quality control.

The photos I’m sharing are from the shower in my unit at move-in. This was considered “move-in ready.”

There is an overall systemic failure happening. Somewhere between ownership, management, maintenance and vendors. BASIC standards and accountability are getting lost. We’re turning over units with mold and buildup in grout and tracks, visible grime, rushed work, and unfinished details and still handing over keys like this is acceptable?

Chewed up or damaged baseboards and doorframes? Which are not costly to replace.

This is what happens when owners won’t fund proper turns, maintenance teams are stretched thin and rushed, vendors are (sorry not sorry) but lazy and cut corners. This is what happens when managers or the leasing teams aren’t physically inspecting units before release. The result is exactly what you’d expect: substandard units being passed off to residents.

To be clear, this isn’t just to put Denver on blast. This is to bring attention to owners, managers, leasing teams, maintenance teams and vendors too.

Managers and leasing agents: there should be a thorough walkthrough before keys ever hit a resident’s hand. If you’re not getting up and inspecting your units, make the time. And start demanding that ownership actually listen when you tell them what these buildings need.

Owners: PLEASE start listening to your onsite teams. When you show up, you’re usually shown the best units, not the “real” ones. Onsite teams are often afraid to show you the truth of your properties because they don’t want to be blamed or risk losing the asset. But the reality is, to put it bluntly, a lot of you need to open your pockets and walk your vacants. Ask your onsite teams “Hey, when’s the last time the HVAC systems were served? When’s the last time the water heaters were serviced?”

My guess is that they’ll tell you “We don’t have the time to service these because we are short staffed, over worked and no budget.” And this should be something that’s done because as the owner, it’s your responsibility to maintain and you’re losing money by these items breaking left & right from poor maintenance.

And honestly, at first I was questioning myself if maybe my standards were just too high. But I stopped and realized they’re not. My standards aren’t high, I was trained to do the job the way we were trained to do it.

An example of two different properties that are 10 minutes apart. These were “move in ready” units.

As a professional, this is embarrassing. As a resident, this is unacceptable.
 

Sadly, I see a general sense of apathy in so many areas of PM now. If owners want to see rent growth they need to see how budget cuts and lack of qualified staffing is affecting the operation of their multi million dollar asset.

Tbh, there is a widespread overall decline in maintenance and available skilled maintenance workforce since the pandemic. It is affecting multi family significantly in my opinion.

Megan Goodmundson - Any time and in any city, when new construction (any product type) labor for apartment maintenance becomes scarce. It’s the nature of the beast.
There’s a lack of accountability and self pride, compounded by impatient management and unrealistic time expectations and starved budgets.
Most maintenance techs, as much as they can do with the time and budget available. Trust me, they’d love to do a better job and can.

Megan Goodmundson see I used to believe this notion. This has been a saying since I started getting into property management before the pandemic.
My point is, this isn’t all on maintenance. Why didn’t the leasing team catch some of these issues and report to the manager? Why did the manager okay this and not outsource some of these issues to vendors?
Why was a wall protector slapped over the hole of a door?
Why was there no wall stringer for the stair case?
Why isn’t the old caulk being stripped away and recaulked?
Grout does deteriorate, if the sealant is gone and the grout is failing, cleaning the mold isn’t going to do anything. Then if that mold explodes—potential lawsuit.
Why aren’t vendors notifying management that “Hey this is more than a cleaning.”
Then again some of these vendors and I’d say majority—paint splatter throughout the units. All over hardware. Paint slapped on you can see streaks or just completely skipping sections. (I once called a vendor out 3 times to paint the same unit he hadn’t finished painting. After the third. I painted it myself.)
I’m just trying to bring light to the issue that our entire teams are failing as a whole. Which I understand there’s only so much we onsite teams can do with the someone else’s money. Also why I made this post. Because this is unacceptable.
Which if this is happening in CO, it’s likely happening everywhere.

Nobody want8to pay the good ones.

Was the vendor told about the grout and was an additional service for grout cleaning ordered? Guessing not.

If it was, then this is a vendor quality issue.

If not, then this is an on-site staff miss.

Commonly there is an assumption that “cleaning” means more than the scope of work.

The scope of work in multifamily has a lower price point than ANY other Industry in the US. This is driven by the owners wanting lower costs and pressuring the mgmt team into using cleaning teams that are simply willing to “show up.”