Almond Property by Sue Taylor logo

Almond Property cuts fix times in half with

Contractor Marketplace

The lowdown

Lettings agency with 200+ active properties based in Merseyside, England. Using Fixflo since 2018.

30%

Time property managers got back

4.5 days

Reduced from 9 days to resolve issues

Products used:

Fixflo Professional

 

The problem

"Life as a property manager can be absolutely thankless. You're never delivering good news to anyone really. From a tenant's point of view, they ring you with a problem and every tenant's problem is urgent in their world. From a landlord's point of view, every time you ring a landlord, you're asking them to spend money.

 

It's a fine balance between managing the relationships involved and making sure that the communication is on point. Before we had Fixflo, it was very ad hoc. We were trying to manage on a spreadsheet, which is difficult when you've got tenants using different contact methods. They'd phone call, send WhatsApps with 20 photographs on, emails with 50MB videos, taking our email server out for a day.


A lot of the time, the contractor goes out, has a quick look, sees what the problem is, goes away, and contacts the office with the potential solution. They have to order a part, book it in their diary, return and complete the repair. It was stretching out the time it was taking to complete the repair."

2023 Homepage hero_Ian Taylor_left text

“Having used Fixflo for over six years now, it's indispensable. I couldn't think of my business running without it. It's as essential to my business as being on Rightmove.”

The solution

“In terms of communication, Fixflo brings that all together for us. It produces order trails, spreadsheets to manage contractors, and a trail for you to follow up on invoices. The comment section on Fixflo really helps because I'm not having to ring up a contractor or a contractor's PA to say, have you picked up that job? It just revolutionises the way our business flows.

An illustration of Fixflo's audit trail and comments section for a broken boiler issue
We've effectively seen that the job times are cut in half. So it used to take us three days to instruct the contractor and then six days to actually resolve the issue. We're now looking at one and a half days to instruct the contractor, and less than three days to actually resolve the issue, which means happier tenants, happier landlords, and means an easier life for us."

 

Contractor Marketplace is perfect for Almond

"Using the Fixflo Contractor Marketplace, I found that I don't need to worry about reaction times from contractors and whether I can get some communication and a contractor visit within 24 hours. There's never an issue in terms of contractor shortage. So that's a bit of a refreshing change. We also used Contractor Marketplace for emergency repairs out of hours.

Previously, we were looking at phone calls 9, 10, 11 o'clock at night. Weekends, evenings, you're never really off the job. Contractor Marketplace has given us our lives back. We can stop work at 5 o'clock and actually trust the fact that something can happen. And we don't need to handhold it step by step and make sure that a contractor's picked it up and made a phone call.
Benefits_CMP Out of hours
We've had more than one occasion where I've woken up in the morning and someone's boiler's gone off or electricity's gone off. And while I've been asleep, a contractor's picked it up, attended, solved the issue, and I've woken up and looked at the report to see what's been done. And that's absolutely perfect."
Illustration showing property managers floating around a Fixflo screen, using Fixflo on their devices

Put down the stress ball

Too many texts? Inbox exploding? You need reporting, automation, and communication tools to improve efficiency and deliver compliance. Imagine how much better things will be for you and your stakeholders.

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