Have you ever had that nagging feeling that maybe your agent was setting you up with the first tradie available and leaving you or your disgruntled tenant to foot the bill? Or that they’re trying to get a good deal for one of their mates? Well, you’re not alone. 

We know that finding a tradie is a concern for Australian property owners. Keyword metrics suggest that property owners research the word ‘tradies’ around 14800 times on average a month. So we’ve decided to pitch in and create a short guide explaining how traditional property management services find tradespeople and how we do it here at :Different - covering everything from to find a tradie that’s right for the job, how to get the right price for the property maintenance job, and how to make the process as easy as possible 

Finding a good tradie is like the holy grail of successful property maintenance - when you’ve got one, you know your property is in good hands. Unfortunately, this isn’t always a walk in the park and property owners often struggle to find a tradie that’s right for the job.

There are a couple of ways to approach this, including using tech or traditional property management agencies to find you a tradie or going the DIY route. Let’s have a closer look at these methods.

A good 80% of Australians enjoy the services of a property manager - and we get why. The investment property management to-do list is long and never-ending!

In addition to lifting the heavyweight of property management off of your shoulders, a good property manager will be a godsend in terms of property maintenance. That’s because they’ll have a few nifty tricks up their sleeve like:

• They have a network they trust
• After years of experience, they know how to find a tradie appropriate for the job at hand
• They know a lot about owner and tenant responsibilities

Remember when we mentioned that property managers are supposed to make your life easy when it comes to property maintenance? Well, that’s only if the property manager is doing a good job of it. 

If your tenant has to wait a month to get a leaky tap fixed and you find yourself on call 24/7 with tradies, your tenant and your property manager, then you’re not getting your money’s worth. 

Most homeowners enlist the services of a property manager to get the best rates, but if you’ve decided to go down the DIY route, you have our respect and a helping hand!  Have a read through our guide on everything you need to know about property management to get you going

• Outsourcing a job to a tradie you don’t know to get a job done quickly (there will be some trial and error here so be easy on yourself)
• Getting overcharged because you’re not familiar with the market

If you’re committed to the DIY game, here’s some tricks of the trade that will get you out of these sticky situations:

• Building a network of tradespeople you trust
• Building a network of local tradies so they’re always close by
• Learning about real estate market maintenance and repair prices
• Learning about your maintenance responsibilities until you can recite them in your sleep

Technology has been a game-changer for the DIY property owner and sorting out repairs has never been easier. Consider apps like Airtasker or hipages to sort out a problem quickly If your tenant needs an urgent repair.

Like the name suggests, we do things a little :Differently when it comes to property maintenance, and here’s how:

• We get 94% of maintenance requests approved within 12 hours
• We get 98% of requests approved to a tradie in 24 hours
• We need your input just once during the entire process
• You and your tenant can monitor the job through the app
• We use technology to find you the best price for your rental property maintenance request

When it comes to tradies, we’ve partnered up with an incredible network of tradespeople that:

• Span the areas that we service across Australia
• Are professionals and experts at what they do
• Understand that customer satisfaction is a top priority
• Know that quantity doesn’t come at quality’s expense: jobs need to get done fast and at a high standard

At :Different, tech is our friend. One of the ways we harness the power of technology is by performing data-driven analyses of the price of the maintenance issue requested to get you the best deal. 

That means that when you have a repair request to approve, like a leaky tap, we’ll provide you with current data showing you the average repair costs of 80% of leaky taps - in case you’re wondering, it’s $156.

Just to make sure that we’ve got our bases covered and are well equipped to give you sweet peace of mind, :Different also takes on out of hours urgent repairs. 

We want to make sure your tenants are as happy as you are, so when they run into trouble out of hours, we hook them up with our out-of-hours tradies. We’ll keep you, the property owner, in the loop throughout the process as well. 

Property owners want to get bang for their buck from their property manager. If you find yourself sorting out repairs with tenants while you have a property manager on your payroll, you might be settling for less than you deserve and it may be time to move on!

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