Block Maintenance: How to maintain your apartment and block

Maintenance to a block of flats can be anything from day-to-day cleaning and upkeep to the periodic maintenance of painting the communal areas, lift repairs and replacing roofs. The service charge you pay will cover maintaining the communal areas, however, it is also important to keep your individual flat maintained. 

Maintaining your apartment

Maintaining your apartment within a block can ensure you are; performing your legal duties (especially if you are renting out your apartment). Regular maintenance can also help to increase the saleability of your apartment should the time come. You can also help to minimise your insurance costs, as preventative maintenance can help avoid insurance premiums going up. For example, regularly resealing your bath can ensure the prevention of any leaks that may run into the apartment below that you may be expected to pay for. Regular maintenance also has added benefits of safety and compliance as well as more specifically ensuring your compliance with any warranty requirements.

Maintaining the block

Maintaining the block can also ensure your duties and responsibilities as a leaseholder. Via your service charge you can ensure that the management company or directors will be regularly servicing items such as communal cleaning,  regular lift servicing and fire system checks. They will also be able to provide reactive maintenance services, should anything require immediate attention, such as car park gates becoming faulty. Then there is the more long term maintenance requirements, such as a security system review, replacement external features (such as roofing and guttering) and the redecorating of the communal areas.

Whilst you are more in control of the maintenance within your apartment, as a leaseholder you should have access to a planned preventative maintenance report so you can see all the maintenance tasks required for your building as well as annual service charge budgets so you know what your service charge is being spent on over the coming years.

It’s also important to remember that within your apartment (especially if you are a landlord) you will need to maintain items such as the servicing of your boiler, electrical checks as well as other minor tasks to ensure there are no defective overflows affecting the exterior or creating damp. In addition, it can also be important to keep the aesthetics of your apartment maintained too, including resealing baths and showers, re-grouting and redecorating.

We have experience in regular maintenance for your home, as well as block management maintenance contracts, so if you are looking for a maintenance company to provide maintenance services to your home or block, please contact us. 

For generic block management queries, you can find more information via block management here.