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Are Your Waldorf Tenants Damaging Your Garage Without Knowing It?

View of the Garage Door on a Waldorf Rental PropertyA rental home’s garage provides a lot of appeal to a home. However, some well-intentioned tenants, who just want to preserve the appeal of the home, can be damaging a rental home’s garage without knowing it. Damage to garage interiors, garage doors, windows, and other elements are known to happen, and it’s not always the result of misuse or neglect.

Often times, a well-meaning tenant just doesn’t have the know-how to properly clean or maintain a rental home’s garage. When that is the case, expensive and unnecessary repairs are often the result. By giving your Waldorf tenants the right information, you can do a lot to prevent unintentional damage and keep your valuable investment in good condition.

A garage is an important part of a quality single-family rental home. An excellent garage door increases the home’s curb appeal, while the interior, windows, cabinets, and even the garage door opener can have a big impact on a tenant’s satisfaction. But all of these elements must go through regular proper maintenance to keep them working well. If one component is damaged, it would affect everything else, making the entire garage a problem instead of a benefit.

The garage door, being the most visible exterior element, needs to have regular cleaning and maintenance to stay working properly and looking nice. A tenant could inadvertently damage a garage door in various ways, from not knowing what basic maintenance tasks are needed, to attempting to do these very tasks while using the wrong tools or cleaning products. For instance, some garage doors are made from one material while others are made from other materials. Some are painted, while others are vinyl or metal. If a tenant uses the wrong tools to clean a garage door, they may end up causing extensive damage instead. There may be a tenant that thinks it’s okay to power spray a painted door clean. Harsh household cleaners may also damage a door’s exterior finish, causing far more harm than good.

Moving past appearances, for a garage door to work well, it requires a functional opener, springs, hinges, and rollers. These parts may rust, wear out, or break over time and through heavy use. In fact, if a garage door is noisy, it may mean that the door’s hardware is in trouble and needs to be lubricated. The useful life of a garage door can be greatly extended just by doing this one simple maintenance task.

The windows, floor, and cabinets in a garage are also the usual parts that get unintentional damage. A leaking car engine could be a problem since oil stains on concrete floors aren’t easy to deal with. Exhaust fumes, dirt, and other substances can gather in windows and seriously compromise the tracks, locks, and glass. Cabinets may be crushed or broken by heavy storage items or even parking a vehicle too close. Just like the garage door, all of these issues can be prevented or corrected with routine cleaning and maintenance. The problem is that a tenant may not know how to do it.

For instance, dealing with motor oil stains require a distinct process that is different from cleaning up other substances. The correct tools and cleaning materials should be used or else the effort of cleaning it may make the problem bigger instead. Harsh chemicals or scrub brushes can scratch or damage windows and window tracks as well as cabinets, but regular household cleaners may not be enough to get the grime off either. To stop continued wear and further damage, a tenant should have the correct information and also a substantial amount of oversight to make sure that the garage of a rental home is kept in great working condition.

Keeping track of a tenant’s cleaning and maintenance record can be time-consuming and difficult for property owners. That is why a professional property management company is needed, and choosing to have one is a good decision.

At Real Property Management Gold, one of our services is to help property owners prepare their tenants on the proper care and upkeep of their rental homes in Waldorf and conduct regular checks to ensure that such tasks are being done. Our property management professionals can help defend your valuable investment from unintentional damage and prevent expensive and unnecessary repairs. To know more about what we can do for you, please contact us online or give us a ring at 301-392-2172.

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