Appliance Maintenance Service For Apartments?

[Craig S.]

For any of you multifamily/apartment owners out there, how do you manage your appliance maintenance and service requests?

I got into the multifamily space to manage apartments and not appliances, but I noticed a decent percentage of the service calls I have been getting are related to some sort of appliance issue (and my appliances are only 1-3 years old, nothing seems built well these days). I have a clause in my lease stating that the tenants are responsible for repair and maintenance of the appliances, however, I am not sure that is the best thing to do. I want my tenants to have a great experience with our brand, and making them buy or repair appliances that we (the landlord) own may not cater to the "full service" apartment management experience that we want to offer. We tell tenants that it is "worry free living" in that all the lawn, maintenance, snow management, etc. is included. If a refrigerator breaks down after 6 months of them living in the unit, I can see how someone may feel it is unfair to buy a new replacement at full price, but not own it themselves.

So I started thinking about having a 3rd party company cover all the maintenance and repair of all appliances. I have coin-operated laundry machines that the laundry company services and maintains (causing no headache for me), so I thought maybe there was a company or service out there that can do something similar for the rest of the appliances in my units.

Do any of you use a service like this or are aware of any companies that offer this type of appliance maintenance/service program? I'd like to have some type of company where I could simply put a sticker on the side of all appliances and the tenants would call that company directly for any type of issues, allowing me to completely outsource all appliance maintenance, so I can focus on the real estate business itself and growing/scaling, not refrigerator fan motors going out:)

Let me know your thoughts!