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Maintaining Rental Properties: How Regular Cleaning Reduces Long-Term Maintenance Costs

Maintaining Rental Properties: How Regular Cleaning Reduces Long-Term Maintenance Costs
June 24, 2024

One of the often overlooked needs of condo rental property maintenance is regular cleaning. Although this might seem like something left to the tenants, every new lease provides an opportunity to do a thorough cleaning to help protect the surfaces, appliances, and various materials in your units.

Maintaining rental properties: How regular cleaning reduces long-term maintenance costs

In this blog, we will examine how regular condo cleaning in Scarborough reduces your long-term costs.

Help to Manage Pests

Routine cleaning helps reduce pests, which can save thousands on pest control services. By ensuring every unit is deep cleaned between tenants, you can remove food remnants and debris that attract pests. 

You also have the opportunity to inspect your empty condo in key areas for roaches and silverfish, such as the empty kitchen cabinets, under sinks, behind appliances, and in the bedroom carpeting for bed bugs. Signs of pests include:

  • Insect exoskeletons
  • Droppings
  • Dead insects
  • Odd discolourations on walls
  • Seeing actual bugs or rodents

If you do spot signs of pests, you can hire a pest control company to come in while the unit is empty to deal with the issue before the new tenants move in.

Bonus Tip

Pests are also attracted to water sources, so make sure all faucets and pipes are leak/drip-free to make the unit less hospitable to uninvited guests!

Improve Appliance Efficiency

Rental unit appliances can drain your energy and maintenance budget when not operating at peak performance. By cleaning your units between tenants, you can reduce the costs of appliance repairs and improve energy efficiency. Regular appliance cleaning and maintenance includes the following:

  • Replacing/cleaning filters
  • Checking for pests
  • Checking and tightening plumbing connections
  • Removing dust and grime buildup
  • Cleaning the condenser coils on the fridge
  • Removing grime and mould from seals on doors, especially on the oven, fridge, and washer
  • Eliminating grime from inside the microwave
  • Removing lint from the dryer
  • Checking and replacing seals and gaskets to form a tight seal on various appliance doors

These steps optimize appliance performance so they: a) don’t waste energy working hard to keep up with demand, and b) reduce wear and tear by allowing smoother operation to avoid the high cost of appliance repair or replacement. 

Restore the Appearance of Flooring

Flooring is an expensive replacement item that helps improve the aesthetic appeal of your units to attract a higher level of tenants. Proper, professional condo cleaning that Scarborough landlords invest in helps ensure:

  • Carpets maintain their original colour, so they always look fresh and new
  • Debris is removed from carpets to reduce friction on fibres that make carpets look dull and old, and also damages the padding below
  • Odours are removed from carpet fibres
  • Debris is removed to prevent premature wear on the protective coating on flooring such as hardwood, laminate, and vinyl
  • Removing staining on grout for tile flooring in kitchens and bathrooms to help maintain the seal and avoid mould  

Proper floor cleaning methods help prolong life to avoid costly flooring replacement and avoid lowering the perceived value of your units, which might call for a reduction in rent.

Reduce the Costs of Work Orders

Work orders take time to process to determine whether they require action. “High-maintenance” tenants tend to produce the most work orders. This often includes unreasonable requests you don’t need to attend to, such as demanding carpet replacement when there’s a stain despite the carpet having been professionally steam-cleaned. 

However, regardless of whether the work order is legitimate or simply nit-picking, it still costs money to process, arrange for inspection, and deem the issue either closed or requiring a resolution. 

Regular cleaning helps avoid work orders by maintaining units to the highest possible level to ensure you have satisfied tenants who won’t find anything to complain about. 

Decrease the Costs of Emergency Repairs

As mentioned, remaining responsive to tenant demands costs time and money. By attending to proper cleaning and maintenance, you can reduce the risk of emergency repairs on things like appliances and plumbing by assessing and cleaning these items before tenants move in. 

As listed above, proper condo cleaning that Scarborough landlords arrange helps reduce the need for repairs and replacements. It also eliminates the cost of responding to tenant complaints when things are damaged and require emergency repairs or replacements.

Whether you attend to these issues yourself, have a property manager/superintendent, or have to call in professionals such as a plumber, proper cleaning will reduce demand on the time and money invested in emergency repairs. 

Avoid Water Damage

During the deep-clean process performed during condo cleaning in Scarborough, you can identify issues in key areas prone to leaks. While steam-cleaning the bathroom, for example, you can ensure grout and caulking remains intact. 

This avoids cracks that allow water to get in behind the tile and cause serious water damage to subfloors and walls. In the kitchen, while cleaning the sink, faucet, and lower cabinets, you can also detect leaks.

Other critical areas include connections to appliances, especially water connections to fridges and washers. All of these steps identify potential leak risks so you can avoid the costs of water damage and related maintenance challenges, including costly mould abatement.

Reduce Dust in the Unit

Although dust might seem like nothing more than a nuisance that your tenants can contend with, allowing dust to build up on appliances, heating/cooling units, filters, fixtures, etc. can lead to costly consequences. 

Dust, especially when combined with moisture, creates a threat to your systems if not removed on a regular basis. It lowers the efficiency of HVAC systems as well as appliances and, when mixed with humidity, can cause corrosion on exposed parts of your systems.

A condo cleaning Scarborough service helps control dust accumulation, removing it from blocked air vents and from filters in appliances such as fridges, ovens, and exhaust fans. As already noted, the proper function of these rental unit essentials is a must to improve energy efficiency and reduce wear and tear on components. 

Bonus Tip

GermBlasters for condo cleaning in Scarborough is the ultimate level of clean, helping you control several common maintenance issues, including the following:

  • Killing mould and mildew, and preventing spores from forming for up to seven months
  • Eliminating odours
  • Effectively cleaning HVAC and air ducts for dust and antimicrobial control

Call the Cleaning Experts at Maid4Condos

As you can see, the regular condo cleaning helps reduce maintenance costs, maintain unit value, and contribute to tenant satisfaction.

Visit our website for more information about Maid4Condos’ condo cleaning in Scarborough and the GTA. You can also call us at 647-822-0601 or contact us online.

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