Do you take pride in your rentals?
As I’ve told you before, I like doing service calls on our rentals. One of the big reasons for this is I get to see how our tenants are keeping the properties.
We pride ourselves on good customer service, which includes a fast response time on service calls. So when something breaks, I’m often there within a few hours. As such, the tenants don’t have time to clean house in preparation for the landlord. This allows me to get a real picture on how they are taking care of their houses.
Well, I got one of those service calls on a rental we have in Adairsville. The problem they were experiencing was that their water was being restricted at both tubs, especially on the cold side, to little more than a dribble when the valve was turned on full blast. This meant that if you like hot showers, life was good. But if you needed the cold water to make the bathwater just warm for a toddler, you were going to have to figure something out.
Since the outside spigot had full pressure, our tenants filled up a bucket of cold water to mix into their baby’s bath the night before and then waited until business hours to call me the next day.
After the tenants told me what was going on, I knew instantly what the problem was. You see, this property was on a well. And that well has a rocky bottom that is made of a sedimentary rock called chert. The well also has a submersible pump, which means every time the well kicked on and off, that pressure differential caused little pieces of the chert to break off and get sucked up into the water pipes. Those pieces traveled to the house and make their way to the faucets.
Now, most pieces are tiny enough that they pass all the way through and get caught in the aerator screen on the faucets which is easily cleaned. However, anything larger than the size of a cooked grain of rice can clog up the line and cause the water pressure to diminish or stop all together.
Knowing this, I went with one of my guys, Hubert, to check things out.
And in case you’re wondering, I’m happy to report that when we got there, the house was immaculate.
Our plan was to put in a water filter that would catch the chert outside of the house. We also needed to clean out the shower valves. This would require opening the walls, cutting the water lines and blowing any debris out so we could dislodge any chert that was in the shower valves.
Now, you may be wondering how I knew the chert was the issue. That’s because we had this issue before at the kitchen sink in this residence. Consequently, we checked the kitchen sink when we got there this time, and sure enough, the cold side was severely restricted. We pulled the supply line loose, shot some water through it into a bucket and out came the rice-sized pieces of chert.
After installing the water filter, we had to figure out a way to remove any chert that was still in the water lines. This process proved to be harder than we expected. Every time we thought we had it cleared, another piece would stop up the line and we would have to take everything loose again.
After some country boy engineering, we were able to get the lines cleared and put back together correctly.
As you could imagine, opening holes in the wall, cutting plumbing and the constant in and out had caused a mess in the house. So, the last part of the day was geared towards cleaning.
I had two of my kids with me, and as I was sweeping my way out the front door, I asked them why they thought Daddy was doing this. I loved my daughter response. She said, “Because it makes the people know that you care about them.” She was right.
You see, we want tenants who take pride in the home they live in. And as I stated earlier, these folks were taking great care of our house. So in order for them to continue to take pride in where they live, they needed to see that we cared enough to leave the house neat, clean and completely ready to go.
By using this philosophy and showing your renters that you take pride in the property too, you’ll get a better caliber tenant who follows your example and takes great care of the house as well.
Joe and Ashley English buy houses and mobile homes in Northwest Georgia. For more information or to ask a question, go to www.cashflowwithjoe.com or call Joe at 678-986-6813.