Being in conversation with so many student housing communities over the past year or so, the TrustHab team has become very familiar with common pain points of today’s property managers. One of which is; those disgruntled 11pm emergency maintenance calls that come from residents (or oftentimes, from their parents!).

In reality, the schedule of most students is very inconsistent. Between rushing back and forth to campus to extended trips back home during winter and summer breaks, their apartments sit empty for a good portion of the school year. So in the event that say the HVAC unit does start to blow warm air despite the thermostat being set to ‘cool’, it’s likely that a resident may not even be home to notice the malfunction until 4 days later when the entire apartment has turned into a sauna. Or even if the student does notice that the air in their apartment doesn’t seem to be cooling properly, it takes effort for them to actually pick up the phone and call maintenance or visit the leasing office in-person to report the issue. Needless to say, being that any expensive equipment repairs are not the financial responsibility of a resident, it tends to be a more popular option to procrastinate reporting the issue to maintenance.

But of the maintenance requests that do come in, why are so many of them after normal business hours? With students being in classes during the day time, it’s usually not until after they’re home later in the evening that they begin to notice the effects of any malfunctioning equipment. In order to get a good night’s rest, it’s common for most people to have a specific temperature they like to keep their residence at night. And a hot, muggy apartment doesn’t normally equate to comfortable sleeping conditions (especially if you’re located in a place like Florida, where the thought of trying to sleep without AC in the summer months seems unbearable).

When a resident does report an equipment issue outside of business hours, the off-duty maintenance manager then has to rush to the residence to fix the problem. The tired, grumpy student feels inconvenienced and isn’t too happy about having to wait up to supervise the repair – all of which never goes down well with parents. Aggravated residents = defensive parents = a formal complaint to Mr. property manager. Disgruntled resident aside, your budget also takes a hit with the maintenance staff working at the over-time pay rate, not to mention any costly equipment repairs that follow. The longer the malfunction has occurred, the more expensive the repair is likely to be.

For the purpose of efficient staff workflows, facilities and maintenance teams don’t normally go door to door to check on the status of equipment unless they’re called out specifically to do so – which is why so many malfunctions take so long to be detected. What if there was a solution that constantly monitored equipment performance in each individual residence, and immediately notified maintenance of any malfunctions so the resident didn’t have to?

TrustHab is a Facilities IoT Management Solution purpose-built to address the pain points of today’s property managers. With TrustHab deployed across a student housing community, property managers are empowered with complete visibility of all smart devices from one centralized dashboard. This data and analytics provides actionable insights that enable maintenance staff to address malfunctions as soon as they are detected (in some cases, the resident won’t even know a problem occurred). The opportunity for proactive maintenance solutions in the student housing industry is huge, and TrustHab is ready to help. Contact us today to learn more.

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