Maintenance has long occupied an awkward place on the multifamily operating statement, treated as an unavoidable cost center that keeps properties functional rather than as a lever that moves asset performance. Most operators still evaluate it one work order at a time, tracking labor rates, vendor fees, and cost per ticket while the larger consequences of slow or poorly executed work show up elsewhere in the P&L.
Those consequences are becoming harder to ignore. Rising operating costs and persistent margin pressure have pushed operators to scrutinize nearly every line item, and a shrinking, aging pool of skilled tradespeople means few portfolios can hire their way to better maintenance performance. Delayed turns, repeat service calls, and fragmented vendor coordination compound across thousands of units, eroding occupancy, retention, and ultimately NOI.
Andrea Zubow, SVP of Residential at Lessen, argues that operators should borrow from logistics companies like Amazon and manage maintenance as a single connected system rather than a series of individual repairs.
Lessen operates a network of more than 34,000 vetted service professionals across more than 150 metro areas, which gives the company a broad view of where maintenance operations break down across asset classes and portfolio structures. In this Q&A, Zubow explains what she calls “Total Cost to Maintain,” where fragmentation does the most damage, which asset classes stand to gain the most, and what technology can and cannot do about the labor shortage.
Insights by Blueprint: The Amazon comparison is a nice frame, but what specifically does it look like in practice? What is one operational practice from logistics that a multifamily maintenance team can actually adopt next quarter?
Andrea Zubow: One practice multifamily operators can take from logistics is standardizing how work moves through the system. Instead of managing maintenance request by request, operators should establish a consistent process for routing, assigning, completing, and tracking work across their portfolio.
Technology helps by giving teams centralized visibility into how work orders move through the system, using that data and intelligence to determine where work could be handled more efficiently. The goal is the same as in logistics: get the right resource to the right place at the right time, with as little friction as possible. That becomes especially important when labor is constrained and every technician’s time needs to be used effectively.
Amazon’s advantage came from owning its infrastructure end to end. Most multifamily operators rely on a patchwork of in-house techs and third-party vendors. Is the lesson that operators should own more of the system, or outsource more of it?
The answer is both. Property owners and operators first need to look at their business and take stock of what they actually need. If you have a strong in-house maintenance team, great. Platforms like Lessen can complement those resources by streamlining workflows, improving coordination, and connecting teams with additional vendor services and intelligence when they need it.
If you don’t have the capacity to maintain a dedicated in-house maintenance team, you can lean more heavily on external resources. Lessen, for example, has a network of more than 34,000 vetted service professionals across more than 150 metropolitan areas who support a range of maintenance needs. For owners with fewer resources, leaner teams, or more distributed portfolios, outsourcing that work makes more sense from both a cost and operational perspective.
The lesson from Amazon isn’t necessarily that you have to own every piece of the infrastructure. It’s that the pieces need to work together as one system. Whether an in-house technician or a third-party provider performs the work, operators need visibility and control over the process so maintenance requests are handled efficiently, issues are resolved correctly the first time, and residents receive a consistent experience.
Why do you think operators overlook maintenance as an NOI lever when they are already scrutinizing every line item amid margin pressure?
For a long time, operators have viewed maintenance primarily as a cost center, essential to keeping a property operational but not necessarily a driver of asset performance. That mindset is changing as rising operating costs and higher resident expectations make maintenance’s broader economics harder to ignore. With advances in AI, operators can efficiently centralize day-to-day operations, analyze maintenance data, and identify optimization opportunities, making maintenance’s direct influence on NOI harder to overlook.
Maintenance influences everything from unit turn times and operating expenses to resident satisfaction, retention, and occupancy. Through that lens, it becomes clear that maintenance touches nearly every component of a property’s bottom line. With that in mind, operators benefit from stopping maintenance as a series of individual expenses and starting to manage it as a portfolio-wide lever for NOI.
Does the impact differ across asset classes like luxury, workforce, affordable, senior, and BTR/SFR? Where is the upside biggest?
The impact can vary across asset classes, but maintenance is an NOI lever in each. In luxury properties, responsive, high-quality service can support resident satisfaction and retention. In workforce and affordable housing, controlling costs, reducing repeat visits, and completing turns efficiently can directly impact operating performance. In senior housing, reliability and timely service matter deeply to the resident experience. In BTR/SFR portfolios, the scale and geographic spread of homes make consistency and portfolio-wide visibility especially valuable.
The greatest upside is in BTR/SFR and workforce and affordable housing, where maintenance activity is high, homes and properties are more distributed, and operations are often fragmented. In those environments, better data and more coordinated workflows can help operators identify avoidable work, manage costs, and improve turn times at scale. Ultimately, the opportunity depends on how effectively an operator manages maintenance across its portfolio.
How do you define Total Cost to Maintain? What do operators typically leave out?
Total Cost to Maintain represents the full operational and financial impact of maintaining a property. Operators traditionally focus on visible costs like labor rates, service fees, and cost per work order, but some of the most consequential costs sit outside the invoice. These can include delayed turns and vacancy loss, vendor coordination and administrative overhead, repeat work from poor service quality, emergency repair premiums, resident dissatisfaction and turnover, and asset degradation from deferred maintenance.
Think about how a sophisticated logistics company manages its supply chain — it wouldn’t measure performance solely by the cost of an individual delivery while ignoring delays, inefficiencies, or service failures elsewhere in the system. Real estate operators should take the same approach to maintenance. To understand its true impact on NOI, owners need to account for both the direct cost of the repair and the operational and financial consequences surrounding it.
What does “fragmented maintenance operations” look like on the ground? Multiple vendors, disconnected systems, inconsistent standards across regions?
Fragmentation within maintenance operations can show up in several ways: missed or delayed work orders, repeat service calls, disjointed vendor coordination and dispatching, prolonged unit turns and vacancies, and resident dissatisfaction. On their own, these issues may seem relatively small, but across a portfolio, they add up quickly and ultimately impact NOI. As portfolios grow, consistency and visibility across maintenance operations become increasingly important.
Is fragmentation worse for operators that grew through acquisitions or for third-party managers juggling owner requirements? Why or why not?
Both can face fragmentation, though it often shows up differently. Operators that have grown through acquisitions may inherit different systems, vendor networks, and processes across regions, making it harder to establish consistent standards and visibility. Third-party managers may need to navigate different owner requirements for approvals, budgets, reporting, and service levels, adding complexity to day-to-day coordination.
For operators that grew through acquisitions, fragmentation is usually inherited: legacy systems, vendors, and processes that were never designed to work together. For third-party managers, it’s built into the contracts, with each owner bringing its own requirements. In both cases, the solution is the same: consistent processes and connected data across the portfolio, with enough flexibility to accommodate local conditions and owner requirements. That reduces delays, avoids repeat work, and makes maintenance a driver of portfolio-wide performance.
How bad is the maintenance labor shortage right now, and is it getting better or worse? And what are the best multifamily operators doing about it?
The labor shortage is a long-term challenge, especially as the skilled trades face a shrinking, greying labor pool. That means property management and operations teams can’t assume they’ll simply hire their way out.
The best multifamily operators are responding by focusing less on building the largest possible maintenance team and more on making their resources more efficient, giving vendors the information and tools they need to succeed.
Technology can play an important role here. Initial maintenance requests are often vague or lack the detail needed to diagnose an issue. AI-driven platforms like Lessen can serve as a first line of defense by asking follow-up questions, requesting photos, and guiding residents through basic troubleshooting to determine whether they can resolve an issue without dispatching a technician. When an on-site visit is necessary, the platform can turn that initial request into a more detailed work order, giving the technician a clearer understanding of the problem before arriving.
The benefits extend beyond dispatch. Technology can also coordinate follow-up visits, manage invoicing, collect service feedback, and track each request through resolution. By connecting these steps, operators can reduce administrative burdens, improve vendor coordination, and get more out of their existing maintenance resources.
Ultimately, it’s about building an operating model that can scale even when labor remains constrained.
Does technology solve the labor shortage, or does it just help operators do more with a team that’s still too small?
Technology won’t solve the labor shortage, and it certainly won’t eliminate the need for skilled workers. Those workers remain critical to maintaining properties and protecting asset performance. Technology can ease pressure on an already constrained workforce.
By adopting intelligent property management platforms that leverage software, data, and AI, owners, operators, and vendors can free up skilled workers to focus their time on the work that requires their expertise. And that value isn’t limited to large operators with expansive portfolios. It can be even more important for smaller, localized teams trying to keep up with constant day-to-day operational demands on limited resources.
– Nick Pipitone
