Property Management Tips: How to Prepare for Emergencies

Floods, fires, and the occasional squirrel in the attic — emergencies come in every shape. Here’s the playbook we use to keep a bad situation from becoming a worse one.

Advantages of having an Emergency line

At Green Ocean Property Management, we have an emergency line that is not just an answering service, which most of the companies have. As your property managers, we have a designated staff that can answer the queries of your tenants 24/7. Our staff can diagnose any issue. They can figure out what’s going on, and if necessary, they contact our vendors and determine whether it can be fixed the next day if it is not deemed to be an emergency.

It is important for us because we’ll be able to take action rather than just say, “Oh, please leave a message and we will call you back.” We make sure that tenants will have the contact information to reach you, the landlord, or us, the property managers at any point. We also have a list of our most trusted vendors that would be able to help us out in case of an emergency.

If it is a flood, we have a cleanup crew. We also have an electrician to check if a flood reached your electrics that might cause a fire. Plumbers as well if there is a leak. We can call them easily and go over the property immediately.

It’s important to know where the shut-offs are

One of the many tasks of a landlord is to make sure that shut-offs can easily be seen. It should have a tag. For us, we take pictures of every single one of these shut-offs, and we email them to the tenants. In that way, if there is an emergency, tenants can already locate it easily by themselves.

Imagine the difference between having a tenant run downstairs, shut off the water, and say, “Hey, we’re good until the plumber comes and fixes it” rather than tenants panicking, not knowing what to do.

Who to call and the must-haves during an emergency

Our previous inspection of the property allows us to know what could happen. We can determine what is deteriorating. We also have a public adjuster that we can call and trust in case of an emergency. These public adjusters help us deal with the insurance companies to get you what you deserve. They’re going to work and help you through the entire insurance process.

As property managers, we make sure that we have a list of qualified vendors that would be able to make any repairs for your property. A handyman for minor repairs or a locksmith when locks or doors get broken. Aside from them, we have electricians, plumbers, and the tools to be able to make sure that you can take care of the small stuff. We also make sure that everybody knows how to reach the fire department or the concerned authorities in any emergency.

If there’s any type of emergency related to gas or electricity, we make sure that tenants know how to contact the electric or gas company to shut it off, if that is necessary.

Those are some of the things that we do to make sure that our tenants are aware of what needs to be done during an emergency. Thus, we’re prepared to handle that emergency for them. As a result, when an emergency happens, the headaches, the worries, the concerns will be resolved quickly and efficiently.

If you or anyone else you know, is looking for a property manager that can respond quickly and handle emergencies and does the type of proactive work to make sure that the process is smooth no matter what happens, please remember that with Green Ocean Property Management, you get more than a property manager, you get peace of mind.