Maintenance Service From Your Houston Property Management Company

When you rent a Houston home, one advantage is that you can call for service when you need it and usually expect your landlord to cover the costs. Most property management companies have written policies that help their tenants request maintenance when needed. To get service when you need it without incurring extra costs, it pays to familiarize yourself with the terms of your lease.

Understanding Service Calls

While you might assume that you could get maintenance service anytime, the management company is concerned with balancing your needs with their costs. Maintenance services are most reasonably priced during daytime hours, while service in the evening, at night, or on weekends is more costly. Your management company, landlord, or outside companies who provide service have to pay a premium at those times, so are likely to put limitations on when they will provide service or require you to contribute to some of the extra cost.

As a result, there are usually rules in place that govern:

• What you are expected to do yourself
• When and how to call for service
• What is considered an emergency
• What are your responsibilities for being present during repairs

When you rent property managed by 360 Realty Management, you receive a hard copy of your lease and have continuous access to our policies right on your computer in the documents section of Tenant Services to prevent any misunderstanding.

Your Responsibility When You Rent A Home

As a renter, your landlord or the management company will take care of major repair jobs in the home, but you are expected to water and maintain the lawn, add salt to the water softener, replace AC filters, change smoke alarm batteries, clean carpets, and perform other small maintenance tasks. If you notice a problem with rodents and insects after you have moved in, you should call a reputable pest control company to take care of the problem.

How Your Houston Property Management Company Processes Service Requests

When you need service beyond these basic tasks, call (281) 859-5959 for emergencies only, request service at the Resident Portal, or send a fax to (281) 596-4370. 360 Realty Management handles repairs in the order in which they are received, according to the following schedule:

• Emergency maintenance, including fires, floods, sewage backups, gas odors, broken water pipes, or fallen trees within 5 to 8 hours. Obviously, you should call 911 for fires or the gas company if you smell gas before notifying us.
• Urgent maintenance, including most plumbing repairs, broken windows, loose railings, wobbly decks, electrical problem, within 2 to 4 days.
• Normal maintenance, including appliance repair, leaky faucets, garage repairs, within 4-8 days.
• Nonessential maintenance, such as fence repair, within 30 days.

Scheduling Repairs For Service Requests

Except for emergency repairs, maintenance jobs are scheduled between 9 AM and 5 PM Monday through Friday. If you report an emergency that does not meet the proper criteria, you may be liable for any additional charges that the service company passes on to us.

If the time frame for maintenance causes you inconvenience, you might wish to call a repair person on your own. However, 360 Realty Management will not reimburse you, and if the technician finds a major problem, you need to get permission from the management company before proceeding.

360 Realty Management of Houston is anxious to provide needed service to you. However, renting a home is different from renting an apartment, as there is not an on-site maintenance staff to accommodate minor problems. While you do not own the property, you have more responsibilities for maintenance when your property is a home rather than a unit in a building.

If you have questions, your property management company is willing to help you. Just contact us online or by calling (281) 859-5959.