How to Create a PDF Property Maintenance Checklist.

It is vital to regularly maintain any type of property — whether it's a personal residence, rental property, or commercial or industrial building. Consistent maintenance not only improves the appearance and quality of the property but also adds value. Property owners, managers, and tenants can benefit from creating personalized maintenance checklists to ensure they meet any rental agreement responsibilities and take care of their valuable assets.

By creating a PDF checklist or property management schedule, you may detect and address any minor issues before they turn into major and costly repairs or safety concerns. Taking a proactive approach can save time, and money, and potentially avoid dangerous safety issues.

What you’ll learn

• Using PDFs for property maintenance checklists
• Planning for regular or seasonal property maintenance checks
• What to include in a property maintenance schedule or checklist
• Tips for managing PDF property management checklists

Why use PDFs for property maintenance checklists?

Adobe invented Portable Document Format files (PDFs) to be easily shared and stored on different devices and systems.

• PDFs are easy to view and access.
  You can easily access and use your PDF files and house maintenance checklist on your laptop, desktop computer, tablet, or via the free Acrobat Reader Mobile App. You can save and store PDF files on your devices or in secure cloud storage. This document format has proven to be reliable over time. PDFs are a document format that has stood the test of time.

• PDFs are easy to share.
  There’s a lot involved in home and property maintenance. While there is much that people can and do undertake around property maintenance themselves, there are also times when a professional tradesperson is needed. PDFs can be emailed to others or shared as links with work to be done and/or to obtain quotes on some tasks by simply extracting PDF pages.

• PDFs can be created to help be productive.
  The interactive and engaging features that can be added to PDFs, such as tick boxes, along with the ability to edit a PDF, annotate, and add comments and fields for calculations, can all help with motivation and productivity. Keeping a property checklist updated and adding photos to show improvements or repairs can also be beneficial if you ever need to make an insurance claim.

• PDFs are adaptable and convertible.
  You can create a PDF home maintenance checklist directly in an Acrobat app, or edit and customize an online template or a free checklist template from Adobe Express. It’s also easy to convert files to and from PDF format and Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Plan for regular or seasonal property maintenance checks.

It helps to categorise tasks in a property maintenance checklist by when they need to be done. There are some tasks that you might want to schedule regularly for every month or second month, and others quarterly, seasonally, or as an annual house maintenance checklist.

For example —

• Monthly — test and check smoke detectors are working
• Seasonally/quarterly — vacuum dust out of smoke detectors
• Annually — check the expiry date on smoke detectors and replace any batteries

Plan your property maintenance at appropriate times of the year, especially for outdoor tasks. This means readying a property for changes in season, such as being watertight when more rain is expected in winter. But also consider scheduling tasks that, for personal safety and comfort, might be better done at different times of the year, such as spring before the full-on heat of summer.

What to include in a property maintenance schedule or checklist.

A property maintenance checklist may vary depending on the type of property (residential, commercial, industrial), its location, regulatory requirements, and who is responsible for any specific checks — be it a property owner, manager, or tenant.

However, any type of property checklist or schedule should include both interior and exterior maintenance, when it needs to be done, and what the actual task or activity is. Take into consideration things in and around the property that needs to be checked and maintained to look after the condition, cleanliness, and safety of a property.

Some examples of regular maintenance tasks and items to check for signs of wear and damage include :

Exterior

• Roof, gutters, and downpipes
• Walls and foundations
• Driveway and paths
• Decks, patios, and balconies
• Weather tightness of windows and doors
• Mould/water damage
• Garden, trees, and shrubs
• Water features
• Locks and security systems
• Pest damage/infestation
• Garages and sheds
• Hoses and taps
• Chimneys
• TV aerial
• Solar/PV panels

Interior

• HVAC system and filters.
• Smoke detectors and fire extinguishers
• Electrical outlets and light switches.
• Hot water heating system
• Exhaust fans in kitchens and bathrooms
• Mould/water damage
• Pest damage/infestation
• Locks and security systems
• Carpets and other flooring
• Wood furniture or features needing maintenance
• Light bulbs
• Grouting/sealing around tiles and wet areas

Appliances

• Oven
• Fridge
• Dishwasher
• Microwave
• Washing machine
• Other electrical appliances.

Tips for managing PDF property maintenance checklists.

To create an effective PDF property maintenance checklist, a few tips are to —

• Customize your property checklist to ensure you capture all the distinct aspects of your building and property that need to be taken care of.

• Use descriptive wording that says what needs to be done. For example, instead of just “Gutters,” write “Check gutters for blockages.”

• Review and update any types of PDF property maintenance checklists regularly.

• Make notes in your property checklist and drop in pictures as proof of what you have done as evidence for a third-party such as a landlord, property owner, or insurer.

It’s easy to edit and annotate PDFs in a downloaded Acrobat app or you can also make the drag-and-drop web-based features of Acrobat Online to make changes such as —

• Edit a PDF
• Add pages to a PDF
• Extract PDF pages or delete PDF pages
• Convert Word to PDF (or vice versa) or Convert Excel to PDF (or vice versa)
• Compress a PDF file to make it smaller
• And more.

Related content.

Other articles that might come in handy on how to use PDFs when taking care of property matters include —

• Using PDFs for real estate: managing property documents and transactions
• PDFs in the cloud: accessing your documents anywhere, anytime
• PDFs for better family budgeting and planning