Long Term Maintenance Plans to Help Extend The Longevity of Your Assets. | REIal Talk | EP. 43

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Real Talk. That's Real Talk for real estate investors. This is podcast number 43. My name is Chris Sonnino. I'm with the Freedom Real Estate family of companies. And today I have Dale Hayward, who we had the pleasure of introducing on our previous vlog episode, who's the maintenance supervisor for Independence Property Management. Today we're talking about the long term property maintenance planning strategy that we use here. This company, a lot of stuff goes into just taking into account properties and maintenance things that happen on a regular basis and trying to plan in a way that's beneficial not just to the resident and the asset, but also to our owners, our clients.

Absolutely. Planning is important because it also gives you. It gives an owner a chance to not have to outlay a whole bunch of money for a project when they could maybe portion out or say, hey, this is coming, right? You know, know this is coming. You know, that helps. It softens the landing.

Yeah, yeah. Thinking of a couple like, just scenarios of. That's just been, that is. Recently we had an inspection. It was, it was a HUD inspection through Section 8. And they have, you know, for those of you that do, Section 8 are familiar with that. Like, they have very, very specific guidelines and sometimes their inspection list can be a little bit daunting even if you prepare for them. Sometimes. I very rarely see an inspection list from section 8 that doesn't have several items on it. But this one in particular that I was thinking about, you know, I think it was in November, December, ground's already frozen. And they are, they, they requested that we resurface the entire driveway. And I was like, yeah, that's not going to happen. When we even got a couple qu. And they were like, yeah, I can't get to this until the ground softens up and we're able to, you know, do that properly. I'm sure there's companies out there that would do it in the winter. But, you know, we wanted to have a longevity and, you know, quality product put down. So we had to set that expectation a little bit. Like, hey, yeah, we definitely need to get this done. I agree with you, but we need to.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's like just one example of, like, having a plan is important. And the answer isn't necessarily no. It's just smart investments say not to.

Do it right now and you know, windows or, or roofs and I mean, any of those things that are not emergent issues.

Right.

But need to be addressed. You know, you can say, hey, well, this is going to cost this much to do over this much. And if we take a percentage over this much time.

Right.

It won't be an, oh, my gosh, we have to do this.

Yeah, yeah. Windows is a big thing when it comes to that. Like when you, when you start looking at windows on a property, like very rarely is, there's one that's faulty. I know we're going through that with a larger multifamily. We have right now under management that several of the windows were fine. They were, they were operational, but not maybe in the best windows. And now tenants are in there and they're using them. And now we're having, we're seeing them fail. And, and especially for ground floor units where it's a safety concern for egress purposes, like there's some urgency to do that. But at the same time, like between ordering a window and it takes four to eight weeks or whatever to order to get them in, and also the fact that it's cold as I'll get out outside like single digits this week. I mean, it's not realistic to replace.

The windows if it's not a broken window. You know, it's time to step back and take a breath and go, okay, well, you know, this is something we can live with over the winter.

Right? Yeah, of course. I mean, we try to prioritize anything. A safety issue. You said emergent issues. Like, we definitely want to get addressed immediately, but, but being smart and strategic about planning. So. And we call that, we call those like seasonal repairs. Like, there's definitely a time and a place to do those. Obviously, if a roof goes bad and it's a foot of snow, right. It's leaking or we see like drastic drafts or something, we have to do something about, about it immediately. But it's just something like, hey, the roof is aged. There's definitely some shingles that need to be replaced. Okay. We're going to get that set up in spring unless there's an emergent leaking problem. And I know that you, you, you and Chris, the other maintenance technician and a couple of the GCs, the general contractors we have that do some maintenance stuff, do pay attention to those things and do notate when we have some things that may come out. I think storm doors is also on that list.

Storm doors, yes. And everybody loves storm doors and hates storm doors at the same time. So it's, you know, and everybody thinks that a storm door is going to. Honestly enough, a good storm door will help with, with drafts in, in the wintertime. But some places don't have them and there's a reason they don't have them or.

Right.

So. And then when they're. When they break, is it emergent?

Right? Yeah, it's kind of. It's kind of a. A gray area. We actually rely a little bit on our owner's discretion on that Storm doors aren't too expensive to replace. I think we took about like a hundred dollars plus some labor maybe, but.

Couple hundred dollars by the time, right?

Yeah, but. But that is like a make. That can be a make it or break it thing for the resident. Like, they're like, look. Which is weird, by the way. I want to say I don't buy or rent properties based on whether or not it has a storm door or not. But we've heard it in multiple times, like, hey, the fact that I can have a storm door is a big selling point for me. And the residents are like, listen, if the owner doesn't want to pay for it, I'll pay for it. Which we don't always encourage. But at the same time, it's like, okay, well that recently. Yeah, we've heard that. Well, yeah, at least one time in the last couple of months. And, you know, so then it becomes there. Okay, well, now it's a different conversation with the. The client and trying to figure out how to mitigate that. So I want to talk about, like, our inspection process because, honestly, on the buyer end, so on the owner's end, like, that's one thing that we talk about when we're onboarding them. Mark talks about when they're in the sales process. Like, okay, well, how often is a property management company going to be in the property? Like, are we going to. Are we going to know halfway through a lease if, you know, the tenant's good, if they're taking care of the asset? We make that. That comes up. When we talk about renewals, like, okay, well, how's the property look? Is the tenant taking care of it? So there are. There is inspections in our contract, and then we also do additional inspections for a fee if needed. But one of the things you kind of brought to the table when you came on board and we started shoveling through all of our backlog maintenance stuff and trying to do better in that regard is you started looking at things holistically and said, look, I inspect the property every time we go. If I'm fixing. We talked about before we got on the podcast, if I'm fixing a sink, I'm touching the plumbing, I'm going to inspect the plumbing, and I'm going to keep eyes on other things and try to identify some deferred maintenance stuff. You want to speak to that?

Yeah. I joke around in the office. I'm the bearer of bad news most of the time because I'll go into a property and I'll be sent in to fix a leaky sink drain and a tenant will say, it's really cold in here. I mean, the heater doesn't seem to work very well. And I'll go down into the basement just to see what's going on and find out that there's no insulation on any of the ductwork, which means all the heat's in the basement.

Yeah, it's in the basement.

Yeah. I mean, it's working great. The heater's working great and everything's working great. But if it's all getting heat loss, it's not very efficient for the tenant or the house. That's not good for the house either. So. And so I'll mention that and, or, you know, and I'll also look at how well everything's constructed and if there's anything that's been. When we, when we rehab a property, we don't, you know, we do everything we have to do and need to do to make that property whole. But those, those are not brand new properties. We didn't build those from ground up.

Yeah, no, they're not complete rebuilds.

So things change. Yeah, things change even after rehab. I mean, foundations move and tenants get.

In there and slam a couple doors too hard and all of a sudden the jam's all messed up.

Yeah, we've got five kids and they're all boys. You know, that happen.

So, yeah, one toddler that puts the wrong thing in the toilet, those things happen. So going in and identifying, getting eyes on it, I mean, we talk about, we talk. We've been talking about this a lot more recently as we are focusing more on like resident feeling and how the residents are communicating and how they're engaged and share some accountability to how the property operates. We talk about them being included in the maintenance process, preparing, like if they want you to paint a patch on the wall, like moving their couch so you can access the patch on the wall, things like that. And when we talk about that, like looking at all of those items when you go in is definitely helps the resident experience a lot more and then also sets a standard. We talk about making like make face a little bit. Sometimes you and Chris go out there just to say, hey, like, I want to look at this, I want to get Eyes on it. Take a couple photos. Our team's working on scheduling some trade to go out and handle the situation, just to kind of diffuse the situation a little bit.

I also try to. And I. And I encourage Chris to do this, too. I. When I go out to a property, if I'm working on this thing, if I see a light bulb out or this needs to be done and it's. And it's a minor repair or something I can do that doesn't cost us anything but a few minutes time. I will do that extra thing and say, hey, you know, and then maybe educate the tenant on, you know, if you do this this way, it'll save you from having to do anything else. And, you know, that helps too. And they feel like they're. People need to feel like they're being heard, right? You know?

Yeah, that's a. That's a big thing. And it helps with maintenance planning, too, because we have some owners that are like, look, I got to work order every single month. Why is that? It's like, well, just, you know, we're going to try to mitigate and help identify things in advance. Right. But the other thing is, like, it's also good that your resident's communicating and telling us that there's issues. So then we'll send you out there and was like, okay, we've been out here twice. Like, what are all your problems?

Let's.

Let's make a list and let's just take care of as much as we can and then set the expectation that, okay, this is not an emergency issue. This is something we definitely do, but maybe we just need to plan a little bit more. Sorry, you don't like the windows, but they're functional. Like, it's not realistic for us to change those, Set some expectations, but then bring that back to the table for the owner. Like, hey, just so you know, we did nip this window discussion in the butt, but we still need to look at it. You know, the cost is going to be this. You may have six months, you know, before it becomes an issue again. And then that way the owner is informed and can make a financial adjustment if needed. While the resident's still happy, they're. They're probably 75 satisfied in the result of that situation. They're definitely going to bring the window.

Back up again right when they were in, you know, and what I've discovered is that, you know, a good tenant is a good tenant. Once they. Once. And once they felt like we are good custodians for them, they are they show a lot more respect for the property. They show more respect for the system. You know, and so. And oddly enough, our work order list goes down in those places. There are, you know, and there are. Some buildings can be chronic. You know, you can have issues with buildings just because of their, like I said, their age. Some, some of the, some of These buildings are 100 plus years old.

Right.

You know, they're in great shape. That's why they're 100 plus years old.

Because they're still standing, they're still solid.

But they, you know, they have their own unique issues. You know, ground settles, cracks appear. And the more educated the tenant is like, oh, my gosh, there's a crack in our mind that's just a settling crack. And, and we can address that now or we can, you know, wait till the weather changes. Yeah, yeah, because we're going to be addressing it again when it gets hot, right?

Because it's gonna, it's gonna. Yeah, we talk about that with expansion of, like, floor. We were talking about floors earlier today. Yeah. Floors move and they, they adjust based on temperature and humidity and a few other factors. It's like, we can mitigate it when it happens, but when it happens again, like, it's just expanding the other way.

Right.

Instead of shrinking, it's expanding like. So some of that's just education. Like you said, like, okay, you're right. This is probably an issue. We should probably address this. But let's, let's, let's step back, let's take a beat.

Right.

Breath. Let's think about this. Get the owners involved where we need to and then make decisions. A few things that we kind of. You brought on when you came on too, is you have some background in H vac, and even though you're not, you currently hold a licensure to carry that on. But the experience matters. And so we started looking at, like, filter services and just general, like two times a year, H VAC services that will just come out and just check the system, make sure they're functioning. We got a plan for the winter for the furnace services. They were rolling out as it all of a sudden got cold. So we're still dealing with some of those furnaces, but I think we're a good position for the spring to be in a good position to get AC services before we need the ACs. One thing that we kind of added and folded into that is obviously they check the air filters, they clean the units, they look at the duct work, they determine, hey, you've got maybe two years left on your furnace, or, hey, your ac, we charged it. We, we did what we needed to. We updated the circuit or this board or this condense, whatever the situation is. But you have X number of years or, or, hey, it's going to last you this year, but it's not going to cool down the way you want it to. That way we can have those discussions with the owners. Like, hey, by the way, this is our price range for our ACs and our furnaces. Like, you may have to. Right.

And you know, and it's not. It's nice if you get a good vendor that will. That can give you a time frame and give you a guess when a good roofer that says, hey, you've got another four years left on your roof, and you know, and things of that nature. So that, you know, okay, I've got four years to save, you know, for, you know, for a new roof, so. Or a new AC unit. And with the filters, it's nice. What's nice is, and something that it would be wonderful to do is as we move forward to get the way, the way the units are set up a lot sometimes a tenant can. Cannot change.

Cannot change the filters. Filters. No.

If we switch to filter grills, you know, in the cold air returns or, or when, when work is done on the heating unit, if they could put in a. A simpler, easier way to insert.

Yeah, insert. Yeah.

So then it can. Because if the tenant can replace those on a regular basis, it's going to add to the lifespan of the unit.

Yeah. So, you know, to talk on that point, like, one of the things, we just rolled out a resident benefit package, which we're going to talk about more in a different podcast. But one of the details that's in that, that's included, that, that's going to be rolling out is like a filter service because it's in their lease. Like, they need to change. They're responsible for changing it, but most of them don't unless they've owned a home and they understand the importance of it. Again, that goes back to education. Like, make sure we're having regular conversations about it. It's in our resident new Letter, like, things like that. But you guys pay attention to that when you're on site, too. So if we're there for, hey, my unit's not heating up, or, hey, it's not cooling down, one of the first things we look at is, is the machine able to breathe, is the air filter changed. And that also changes the price, like the billing, like the resident change the filter, we're going to charge them for a filter replacement. And the owners love that. It's also something that we're talking about years on the lifespan of a system, as if the filters change regularly. We're not talking about days or months. I mean, it's a year's calculation. And being on top of that's important.

And knowing your tenants, I mean, a single person with no pets is not going to create as much dust and stuff in the house that are going to clog the filter so their filter can be longer. But if you've got five kids and three, three cats, you're going to have an issue almost on a monthly basis. So. And in those cases, it. If we can't make it easy, you have to make it easy for people to do the right things.

Right.

And so we, and some of those units, you have to literally. To open up the unit to take, to put.

Yeah. To put the filters.

We don't want our tenants doing.

Right. Absolutely not, no. So, yeah, we are kind of shifting the, the process a little bit on that. But again, the benefit comes is like we're in the properties quite a bit.

Right.

We can do inspections periodically just because. Right. And, and so when we start seeing like H Vac and, and furnace and other issues that can be mitigated by something simple like a filter change or even if we have to go in and like change the batteries on the smoke alarm, like that's a good time to also check. Hey, I'm gonna go and check your furnace while I'm here. And we just have, we just have a stock of furnace filters. Now granted there's some size differences, some of them have wonky ones, but you know, mitigating that up front and that's a really low cost thing for the owner. Like the cost benefit of changing a filter is astronomical because a Furnace ranges from 3 to $5,000 depending on, you know, the age and efficiency and all those factors and size.

And these days, I mean, I, I've talked to vendors and, and they are. They only have a lifespan of about 15 years as it is.

Right.

I mean, so, and, and that's crazy to me, but that's, but yeah, but a 15 year cycle, you know, and there again, that's long term. That's a long term maintenance thing. Okay, how, how old is this unit?

Right.

If we've been servicing it for five years, you know, and it's only got 15, you know, in another. Well, hopefully you have it for another 10.

Right.

Same tenant in there.

Yeah, that'd be, that'd be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, knowing in advance. So we do rely a little bit on skilled trades for those things, but we can help mitigate on the front end a little bit of the. Those the expectation again, education for the resident, some education for owners is needed. But if the owner is equipped, like if our clients are equipped with that information, like, hey, you only have two years left in this. You're probably 10 years into your lifespan here. Services today cleaned it, it looks good, but there are some failing parts that are not going to be replaceable. The owner can then make a capex decision. They can say, you know what, I've got a little room in my budget. It's been a good year. 2021 served me pretty good.

Right.

Resident paid on time, my portfolio was performing, didn't have a lot of expenses. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and drop three grand on a furnace. Go ahead and just get it done. And then all of a sudden they have a tax write off too, you know. Yeah. So I mean, but it's better to be in a position to make that decision before it's an emergency.

Right?

Right. Because once, once we have the conversation, hey, your tenants without heat. Because the furnace that we told you last year was only had a year left on it, we didn't change it then, but now it's 2 degrees. It's gonna be like 8 degrees on Friday.

Yes.

Hey, they don't have heat. It's 8 degrees outside. How much of a decision here, like we have to replace their furnace? All of a sudden you're backed into a wall and you don't have the ability to make a decision based on. For no knowledge. Right. So that's instrumental.

In my perfect world, there's no emergent problems, you know, you know, the random burst pipe, you know, because it was old and it was inside a wall that you could get to. We can't help that. But.

Right.

You know, the things that we can help and we can be proactive about, it's going to be better for everybody.

Yeah. It's funny you brought up old pipe because I saw a work order today. I was, I was going over a statement for an owner and clarifying a few expenses. And one of the expenses was checked check on age of galvanized piping to determine like next steps on whether or not we should replace or not. And you know, that's, that's an interesting thing actually. Honestly, this time last year I wasn't seeing a lot of work orders like that, but I Immediately thought of, okay, that's preventative maintenance. Like, there's probably not an active issue with that galvanized pipe, but we probably recognized it when we were there. There's probably some other leak or something going on. And now we're like, okay, how much. How many feet of this stuff are we do. Are we dealing with. Do we see any deterioration marks or areas where it's maybe falling apart? And that was a win. Like, the owner had to pay 45 for that inspection, but that's probably going to save him thousands of plumbing repairs down the road.

Well, I mean, because it's, It's. It's a lot cheaper to replace galvanized pipe when you're not working on pumping the water out of the basement. You know, when you can plan it and you can say, okay, well, we can replace all of this for. I mean, because it doesn't. It isn't a super big expense.

Right.

In the exposed areas to replace that.

Right. Well, especially since we try to use pex, right. Or PVC drains or things like that. So, yeah, I mean, there's definitely technology that is in our favor to get things done cost effectively without having to replace them in five years.

Right. I mean, looking at a cast iron trunk line. Sewer trunk line, right. You know, you look, you see a cast iron sewer trunk line in a basement, and you say, well, that's been there for 75 years. Right. Yay for. Yay for it.

Right.

Yeah, I would definitely put that as a goal to have that replaced with pvc.

Yeah, actually, that's you. You bring up a good point there. So we've had some pain. We set some pains with get with cast iron drains in general because they ultimately will fail. Right. And so I've had some acquisitions where owners have talked to me like, hey, Chris, I'm thinking about taking this property on. And I get the inspection report, because that's usually how it goes. If they're under contract, I look at their inspection reports to set expectations of what they can expect from a resident. And right in the middle of the inspection is this big old picture of a galvanized pipe. And it's teeing off and wine and it's like 20ft of pipe. And I'm just like, bro, that's gotta go. And they're like, really? Why? And I'm like, yeah, you want to. You want to get rid of it now while it's still intact. Otherwise we're talking about when it breaks, like, you're not going to be able to mitigate it for Just a couple thousand dollars, like it's going to be 10. I think we had one that was the line when it wouldn't broke. Like we repaired the section and then because of the break, it had stressed it somewhere else and then it broke three or four other places. And by the time we were done, it was like a $13,000 job because we had to tear up stuff outside. And yeah, if we can mitigate that quickly, then we don't have that expense, the large expense down the road.

Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to say that in, like in a multi family unit, when you've got most apartment complexes or multi story units, they've stacked the bathrooms and the kitchens on top of each other. So there are common wall chases where all of that plumbing for everything is going up one wall.

Yeah. And servicing multiple units.

Right. So when you have an emergency, I mean in, in one of the units, my assumption is that if it's bad here.

Right.

It's bad above it or below it.

And if it isn't now, it will be as soon as we cut into this and start tearing it off.

So I mean, so when you, when you replace it there. Yes. I mean you don't want to kick out a tenant above you or below you to, to do more work. But you can say, well, we know that, you know, the next time this is vacant or you know, maybe in a few months or in a year we could maybe plan to go into this unit and connect up to the, you know, the good stuff.

Right.

You know, so that eventually you're up, you're honestly upgrading the whole building.

Yeah. You could potentially even buy the materials in advance. You just have them like, hey, this is 123 Main street for when we do this repair. Yeah, that's a good point. And honestly we're doing more and more of that. It's, it's tough sometimes to gauge that, but I mean, honestly, it's certain things like, like that, like cast iron pipes that you can kind of just know that if it's not work, if it's not functioning in one area, it's probably not going to work in other areas.

Right. And we try to, we try to clear the drains and, and you know, clean them out. And that's usually when the trouble begins, is because you're dealing with old galvanized pipe and you're cleaning it out. When you say cleaning it out, what you're doing is you're grinding it out with a piece of equipment and hopefully none of that Is so thin over the years that you aren't going to have an issue, but you have to do it. It has to drain.

Absolutely.

And these are things that in rehab, you don't see. It's hidden in the walls. It's just not part of it.

Yeah.

Unless it is.

Yeah. And quick fixes in that situation are not ideal. So no flex seal, no. No weird wraps or anything. Like, the band aid repairs are just that, they're band aids. Like, you've gotta. You've gotta mitigate it quickly and fast. Or if it's not an active issue, just, like, budget for it.

Right.

And we know it's coming.

Exactly. And if you do have to go in an emergency, do it right. Fix it. Right. And know that in your mind you're going to connect to this new pipe with down the next floor.

Right.

You know, so make sure that you plan for that.

Yeah. Another. Another thing that we kind of do, it kind of goes along the lines of plumbing because sometimes, like, we see water intrusion in basements and we immediately go to like, okay, this is an older house. Like, we don't. Unless a basement is, like, completely, like, waterproofed and finished. Like, we do not advertise a basement as living space. And even then, like, we prefer to have a bathroom. And, like, we have to have proof that it's actually livable. We just. Because our stairs going downstairs doesn't mean it's a livable basement. So when we see water entries in basements, like, we merely go, oh, God, is there a leak somewhere? Something leaking all over the place? Or two. Like, it's an older home. Like, we can't always force groundwater that comes up. I mean, again, we can mitigate the best we can. Sometimes in these acquisitions, we can see that there's been water levels issues. And then our rehab team tries to mitigate that however they can. But something that we don't always think about is, like, sometimes the gutters aren't sufficient. Right. Like the, the water. The water table's fine. It's just the downspouts dropping right next to the house, and it's dropping directly. So one thing that you guys do a lot is when you're there, you look for. You just look up. Even if you're there to do interior work, we just look outside. Like, okay, does the gutters look intact? If they look the downspouts connected, do they point away from the house? Do we need an extension put in? I know Chris. Chris B. He just. He went out and bought like 20 or 30 downspout extensions just because, like, we just keep them in the trucks. Like when we go out to properties like, oh, hey, this is kind of too close to the building. Let's just throw a downspout extension on there, get appointed away. The second piece of that is that we have a company that every year in the fall, they'll, they'll, for a small fee. Small fee, they'll go out and they'll climb up on ladders and clean all the gutters out, clean all the downspouts down, and they'll do exterior inspections for us. They'll say, hey, look, the siding looks pretty beat up. It looks pretty aged. I would suggest this while I was up there. It looks like you have some shingles pulling up. I looked at your roof cap. Like they'll, they'll go through that entire 360 inspection of the exterior for us. And even if our own, like, I encourage our owners every year to get it and I explain like, hey, this is not just a gutter cleaning. Like, this is a full service inspection and it's by a professional that will also warrant their work. So if they go out there and do a gutter cleaning or replacement or something and it fails, they'll go back out and look at it.

Just, just for the record, that's not for the faint of heart. Some of those gutters are three stories up.

Right.

You have to go up and between two buildings and it's not. And so these guys are good and they have to get up there and deal with it. And there's also raccoons.

Man, you had to bring a raccoon.

Yeah, but I mean, they have, there's critters, squirrels and raccoons. Love the gutters. The gutters are freeways for them.

Yeah.

You know, so.

Yeah, yeah. So that's just one of another thing that we do. Just generally speaking, you know, we do have some owners that are like, hey, like, I'm not interested in that. And then we're like, okay, well, we'll go up there, we'll clean your gutters out and we'll kind of eyeball it. But we're also not roofers. So we can estimate, like, hey, there might be something wrong here, but having that eyeball. 150 for a two story building or more like you're not going to get that anywhere else.

Well, worth it.

100 worth it. And I think, I think probably 90% of our clients actually take advantage of that because it is such a value add. And honestly, like, if it's something small, they can just mitigate Right. Then like, they're just a, hey, look, I just went ahead and did this, I tacked this down, or a, I did that. But they'll send us photos and a full inspection. It's a very intuitive process. It's one of those that no news is good news, because if they say, hey, we just cleaned the gutters all good, then they've done the inspection and everything else looks good.

Because ironically, gutters are not that expensive.

No.

So to just do. I mean, even if you had to replace them, you're not talking about thousands of dollars, hundreds of dollars.

Right.

And it takes care of the building very well.

So, yeah, so we talk about all of these things on. On long term planning for property, property maintenance, and kind of some of the strategies there. But to be completely transparent, like, we can't mitigate everything. Like, we're. We're going based off experience, what we see, trends of our experience, just personally being years in service, having construction backgrounds, looking at our contracts and, like, what comes with our agreements and things like that. But there are certain things that are just completely unforeseen. I brought up. You brought up raccoons, man. And there wasn't a situation this week, like, it came over this weekend where we got a call on a resident. Of course, I was the one taking the maintenance call after hours. And I immediately reached out to you about it. But, like, it's. He's like, yeah, my kitchen ceiling caved in. And we're like, is there water coming in?

Like, well, that would be the assumption.

Yeah. Yeah. Because why would a whole sheet of drywall just fall out of a ceiling? And by the way, this wasn't like a recent patch, so it wasn't like a. Oh, wait, we didn't tack it in. It was.

It was. It's gonna be six sheets of dry.

Six sheets of drywall. There you go. Large section of ceiling just came in. Luckily, nobody was hurt. Okay. And so, like, we're going through this troubleshooting and trying to figure out what's going on. Is there active water coming in? Like, what's going. Did you get rain? Were you seeing pooling of anything? And. And even when you went and looked at it, you were like, no, this stuff's dry.

Yeah, it's.

There is nothing wrong. There's. Obviously there's something wrong, like the ceiling fell in, but there's nothing that indicates that there's been any sort of damage to the system. And I think we came to a conclusion there was probably a critter or coon or Something that was messing around.

There said that they thought that there were raccoons up there. And, well, here's what's odd about it. They put in a work order, like, a couple days before saying, hey, my. My kitchen light is loose or.

Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And.

And, well, and so I think I had already been scheduled to go out there on Monday. Yeah. To fix that.

Right.

Before that could happen. The whole thing.

The whole thing. The whole thing came in.

I was actually there for another unit before I went. I was able to access that to look at it. And the. The tenant in that unit we were talking about, he said, yeah, I heard a big old noise. He said, I wonder if it's the raccoons. I said, what? He said, well, there's a hole in. Over the gutter. And I said, what? Show me. So I went and looked, and there's a. There's a. There's a. There's a hole. Because raccoons, what they like to do is they like to get warm like everybody else.

Right.

They'll get up, they'll use the gutters and eaves, and they'll try to find a way to dig their way into the attic space.

Right.

And that's what I guess happened. And they had a big party. And I. I don't. I still don't. I'm still not clear on how they managed to knock it all down.

Right.

But it all came down.

Yeah. But that's a perfect example of, like, we were already mitigating issues. We were going through the process of identifying, like, areas to improve the property, and mother nature got to it first. And so now we're like. I mean, the property's being cleaned up. Like, we're. We've already prepared to go in and put in some more insulation, put in some drywall and get it mitigated. Residents in good spirits. And the fact that they're ceiling caved in.

Yeah, I was surprised at that, because they couldn't. They can't live there until.

Right.

You know, they're working around that. So.

Yeah, so that's an extreme example of, like, we can't mitigate everything. I think it would be a little bit different if there was a water leak, like, but it was, like, fine one day, not the next. And so now we're. We're going through that process. You know, we've kind of afforded the owner, and we've kind of going through that, and there's probably other situations similar to that.

Foundation issues. Foundation issues are notorious because, I mean, that foundation could have been great for 150 years. And then this year it decided. Or the city decided they were going to change the storm drain system or, or mother nature decided that the water table was going to shift.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, things like that affect the foundations and I mean not generally drastically, but enough to scare people and make things, you know.

Yeah. I mean, or we go through like a week of constant rain with no sun and no brakes and all of a sudden like everybody's like, oh, my drain's backing up. And so. Yeah. Because this, you know, we can't, the city drains can't handle the influx of water literally backing it back up, quite literally. And that's not, it's not a property issue. Like the property strains work perfectly fine. But it's. But that goes back to the just we're in the properties a lot.

Right.

We, we identify wherever we can improve or adjust and plan. But ultimately things do happen. We've had situations where like furnaces have been serviced and everything was great. And then we get one cold day and it just. The furnace is like, yeah, no, I give up.

Yeah.

You know, but we can only go, go based off the information we receive and the knowledge that we have.

Right.

And then try to plan accordingly.

It'd be great if we knew in advance of everything. I mean.

Yeah.

So the trick is to be able to, to mitigate it well even if we don't know what's going to happen, you know.

Yeah.

Whatever. Three you get thrown at you just.

Oh yeah. I mean it'd be great to be. No. Oh, hey, Friday at 2:30 this property is gonna go out. Yeah. I would be out there two days early making sure it got fixed. But you know, unfortunately like, you know, we try to be proactive as possible, but a lot of, unfortunately a lot of maintenance is a reactive state. Yes. You know, we can like, I think we've actually planned to like do certain repairs of properties and then we get work orders the morning of like, oh, hey, by the way, these things are happening now too. And now what would have been an hour long repair is now a two or three hour repair because there's four other things we have to do. Yeah. So all that's like setting expectations, delivering on objectives and trying to mitigate outcomes the best we can. It's not a perfect science, but when it comes to like deferred maintenance and project planning. I know we were talking about parking lot that needs to be redone at our multifamily. It's like there's a lot of factors Besides the fact it's cold, it's all get out right now. And so it's a. Heck no for draw for, for paving anything. You know, we have residents. We have two buildings worth of resident, close to 30 residents that park in that parking lot. Like, we've got to figure out how to get them new parking and coordinate the city for drains and permits and, and all of the things that go into that. It's not something that you just say, oh, I'm going to do that on Thursday. Right.

It's an evolution thing too, because these, these are three or three separate properties. Three separate buildings.

Yeah. I think they're three and a half parcels actually.

And they were, they were all built.

By different people, I believe, different builders, different times.

But now they're all owned by the same owner and they. And so all these parking lots need to be rethought and re. Merged because if you're going to spend the money to repeat repair it, you.

Might as well just do it, do.

It right what needs to be done so that you don't have to worry about it again. But it's, it's, you know, it's a process. And, and you, again, like you said, you can't fix. I mean, if a storm drain clogs up and fails, there's not a whole lot we can do about the storm drain failing in the middle of winter.

Right.

You know, we, all we can do is say, well, okay, that's a springtime, we got to get on that.

Not. Yeah, well, and then like we got a joke before we came in here, like, you know, Ohio is the four season in a day type of place. So I mean, just because like today it's 40 some degrees, tomorrow is going to be the 12th. The only thing we miss today is some sunshine and blue jays. Right, right.

Yeah, we, I mean, it's hard to. It's hard to plan except until you get to the known. I mean, you know that after March we can probably right things done. But until then we have to just work around it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, Dale, I really appreciate you coming on. I think we've had a really intuitive and eventful, you know, coloration of maintenance and what all. What all entails and, and what all we try to do to influence outcomes. It's a moving target. So it's always hard to do. And even when we're locked on, like things going to turn around, like so. All right, so I think that's it. We have for today. We like to end these things by saying invest smart live.

Happy.

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