Tenant Maintenance Tracking: A Simple System

My tenant in Unit 6 waited 23 days for a leaking kitchen faucet. Not because I didn't care. Because I forgot.

She texted me on a Tuesday while I was driving. I read it at a red light, thought "I'll deal with that tonight," and completely forgot. 23 days later she texted again, pretty angry. The leak had warped the cabinet floor underneath the sink. What would have been an $80 faucet repair turned into a $400 job.

That was the moment I realized I needed a system.

The Problem With Tracking Maintenance in Your Head

Small landlords get maintenance requests through texts, calls, emails, and sometimes sticky notes on doors. There's no central place where it all lives.

When you have 3 units, you can keep it in your head. When you have 8, you can't. But the transition happens gradually, so you don't realize you're drowning until something slips.

I was managing 10 units and tracking maintenance in my head and my text messages. That's not a system. That's hoping you remember.

Step 1: One Place for Everything

Pick one place to log every maintenance request. I use a Google Sheet (I share the template in my free maintenance tracker spreadsheet post), but it could be a notebook or a note-taking app. The tool doesn't matter. What matters is that every single request goes in one place.

When a tenant texts me about a problem, I immediately open my sheet and add a row. Before I respond. Before I call a vendor. Before anything. The request gets logged first.

This took discipline to build. For the first 2 weeks I had to force myself. Now it's automatic.

Step 2: Prioritize Simply

Three levels. High, Medium, Low.

High means safety or habitability. Water leaks, no heat, broken locks, electrical problems. These get addressed within 24-48 hours.

Medium means quality of life. Broken dishwasher, HVAC not cooling well, running toilet. Within a week.

Low means cosmetic or minor. Squeaky door, scuffed wall, loose handle. Next turnover or when I have a handyman coming anyway.

Don't overthink it. Just pick a level when you log it.

Step 3: Track Status

Every request is one of four things: New, In Progress, Waiting on Vendor, or Complete.

When I log a new request, it's "New." When I call the plumber, it becomes "In Progress." When the plumber says "I can come Thursday," it's "Waiting on Vendor." When it's fixed, "Complete."

These four statuses tell me everything I need to know when I scan my sheet.

Step 4: Review Regularly

Here's where most systems fail. You build a great spreadsheet and then forget to look at it.

I check my maintenance sheet every Monday morning. Takes 3 minutes. I scan for anything High priority that's been open more than 2 days. Anything Medium that's been open more than a week.

If I see something aging, I follow up right then. Call the vendor. Text the tenant. Whatever it takes to move it forward.

The Weak Link

The weekly check works 90% of the time. The other 10% is when I'm on vacation, or sick, or just slammed at work and Monday comes and goes.

I missed a High priority request for 6 days once because I skipped my Monday check two weeks in a row. Tenant had no hot water. That's a habitability issue in most states.

The system is only as reliable as the person running it. If you're new to landlording, check out the maintenance tracking mistakes new landlords make so you don't repeat mine.

Adding Automatic Monitoring

After that hot water incident, I added RentGuard's maintenance monitoring. It reads my maintenance tracker sheet daily and emails me when a request is aging past its priority threshold.

High priority open for 3 days? Email. Medium open for 8 days? Email. I don't have to remember to check. It checks for me.

I still do my Monday review. But RentGuard catches the stuff I miss between reviews. It's a safety net for my safety net.

If you want maintenance alerts without switching to some big PM platform, check out descoshop.com.