A new report from Fixflo has revealed that landlords are spending £1,088 annually on maintaining their rental properties, with an average of £535 a year fixing leak-related issues — the most common kind they face.
The report also states that the skilled labour shortage has had a negative impact on the property sector.
Flagging interest in training for the trades means that the average construction project is more expensive, and costs up to 20% more than it did five years ago.
Data also showed that water and leak issues are the most common emergencies tenants report — this includes everything from dripping taps to burst pipes and boiler problems.
Some 72.4% of emergency issues were in this category, making them more than four-and-a-half times as likely to happen as the second most frequent emergency type.
In second place are alarm and smoke detector emergencies, which were 15.96% of issues reported.
These most frequently related to the supply of power to alarms, which were treated as emergencies not because they were hazards in and of themselves, but because of the danger they posed if left alone for even a few hours.
This was followed by electrical emergencies (5.62%), which most often took the form of dangerous broken sockets, broken windows (2.65%), and gas leaks (1.77%).
Joseph Basson, head of property management at Robinson, Michael and Jackson, commented: “We’ve definitely seen quotes from contractors increase since the pandemic.
“Prices are probably 20% more expensive.”
