Small landlords rarely lose money on one big repair. They lose it on the slow drip of small ones nobody wrote down, the water heater that failed in January without warning, and the deposit dispute with no move-in photos. A simple maintenance record fixes all three.
Estimate what to set aside each year with the free Rental Maintenance Reserve Calculator.
Log every request as a work order
Give each request a number, the date it was reported, the unit, a category and a priority. When it's done, add the vendor, the cost and the completion date. Two things become visible almost immediately: how long repairs take you, and which unit or category costs the most. Both are hard to see from a pile of receipts.
Set response priorities
Decide in advance what counts as an emergency (no heat in winter, a major leak, no water, a safety hazard), what is urgent and what is routine. Many owners aim for emergencies within 24 hours and urgent issues within 72. Local habitability rules may set their own timelines; check them for your area.
Keep an asset register
List the expensive things that wear out: water heaters, furnaces, AC units, roofs, appliances. Add the install year and a typical life (water heaters often 8-12 years, furnaces 15-20, roofs 20-30). The replacement year then calculates, and you can plan the spend instead of reacting to it.
Budget a reserve
A common rule of thumb is to reserve 1-2% of the property's value per year for maintenance. A $320,000 duplex at 1% is $3,200 a year, about $267 a month. Older buildings and tenant turnover push the figure higher. Track spend against the target per unit, so you notice when one property is quietly eating the others' reserve.
Repair or replace?
When an old appliance breaks, compare the repair to its replacement cost and its age. The common 50% rule says replace when the repair is more than half the replacement cost, especially late in the item's life. A $380 repair on a 9-year-old water heater that would cost $1,100 to replace is borderline. The free Repair or Replace Calculator does the comparison.
Inspect at move-in and move-out
Walk every room with the tenant, mark the condition of each item, take dated photos and both sign. At move-out, compare against the same sheet. The Move-In / Move-Out Inspection Checklists cover every room, and the Rental Maintenance & Repair Tracker keeps the work orders, assets and reserves.
This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice. Landlord-tenant rules vary by location.