The Repair Problem Nobody Can Solve With Another Email

 Looking at how long repairs have been open, what is causing the delay and whether someone is actively progressing them tells a much better story than the number of jobs alone.

In property management, maintenance is often measured through the volume of jobs received, completed and outstanding. These figures provide a useful operational snapshot, but they do not necessarily explain why a repair remains unresolved or whether the issue is being actively managed.

A maintenance item that has been open for 30 days because a specialist part is unavailable is very different from one that has been open for 30 days because an approval email was not followed up. The age of the job matters, but the reason behind the ageing provides much greater insight.

This is where maintenance can become an important indicator of operational health.

For tenants, maintenance is one of the most tangible parts of their experience with a property manager. They may have limited visibility of the owner, contractor or approval process behind a repair. What they experience is whether the issue is acknowledged, communicated and progressed.

For owners, the expectation is equally straightforward. They need confidence that maintenance is being identified, actioned and followed through, with appropriate communication where decisions or delays arise.

The challenge is that maintenance can quickly become an email management exercise. An owner is waiting for a quote, a contractor is waiting for approval, a tenant is waiting for access and the property manager is waiting for a response. Each individual step may appear reasonable, but collectively the repair can remain unresolved for weeks, even months.

The solution is not necessarily more communication. It is clearer ownership.

Every ageing maintenance item should have a reason, a responsible person and a defined next action. Where an owner approval is outstanding, there should be a clear follow-up process. Where a contractor is unavailable, an alternative should be considered. Where access is preventing completion, the tenant should be actively engaged. Where a repair is likely to take longer, expectations should be communicated early.

This also means distinguishing between maintenance that is genuinely delayed and maintenance that has simply stopped moving.

An agency can therefore learn more from its maintenance data by asking a few additional questions: How many jobs are over 30 days old? Why are they still open? How many are awaiting owner approval? How many are contractor-related? How many require PM action? And importantly, how many have no clear next step?

The objective should not be to eliminate every older maintenance item. Some repairs will naturally take time due to availability, specialist trades, parts, insurance or owner decisions. The objective is to ensure that no maintenance item becomes old simply because nobody is actively driving it.

For property management businesses, this creates an opportunity to move beyond measuring maintenance as a volume metric and use it as a measure of operational discipline.