Rental Property Maintenance Requests: What 193,000+ Tenant Requests Reveal About What Breaks Most Often

Tenant maintenance requests are the single highest-frequency interaction in property management. They drive maintenance costs, shape the tone of the lease relationship, signal property damage early, and over time, they protect or erode the property value of every unit in the portfolio. To put numbers on what landlords actually face, we pulled more than 193,000 rental property maintenance requests from our platform, spanning eight years and all 50 states, and looked at what tenants report, how often they report it, and what it takes to manage the inflow. (See the full report here).

The key findings:

• Plumbing is 1 in 4 rental property maintenance requests and stays #1 even after the messy "Other" bucket is cleaned up. The top four categories (plumbing, HVAC, appliance repair, electrical) account for roughly 71% of all work orders.
• Tenants submit 3.3 maintenance requests per unit per year, up from 2.93 in 2020. Single-family rentals run slightly higher (3.40) than multifamily (3.23).
• Plumbing has the highest repeat rate at 1.60 requests per affected rental unit per year. The categories with the most volume are also the ones most likely to come back.
• Hemlane-coordinated repair requests resolve 31% faster than self-managed ones (10.1 days median vs 14.7 days). Coordination wins in every category we measured.

Plumbing is the Most Common Request

The category breakdown is more concentrated than most property owners expect. The top four categories absorb roughly 71% of every maintenance request a landlord will ever take.

Plumbing leads at 25.4%, or 47,127 of roughly 185,000 categorized requests, covering the rental maintenance issues every operator sees most often: water leaks, a dripping faucet, a failing water heater, slow drains, and running toilets. HVAC sits at 12.3%, appliance repair at 12.2%, electrical at 8.4%. Those four absorb most of what tenants submit, which means every operator running rental units needs reliable vendor relationships in those four categories before they need anything else.

The rest tapers quickly. Handywork, pest control, locks, recurring maintenance tasks, garage doors, turnover cleaning, contracting, and landscaping each sit under 6%. They matter in aggregate, but they do not drive the operational rhythm of a portfolio the way the top four do.

What's Actually in the "Other" Bucket

The second-largest category in the table is "Other / Uncategorized" at 21.5%, or about 41,457 requests. That number is an artifact of the tenant-facing intake form, not a real category of work. We ran keyword analysis on every "Other" request title and about 70% can be re-mapped to existing categories: doors and locks (16% of the bucket), plumbing and water (13%), interior surfaces like drywall, paint, and flooring (10%), with windows, exterior, cleaning, and safety detectors filling most of the rest.

Truly uncategorizable requests, like move-in walkthroughs, move out punch lists, HOA complaints, and general inquiries from new tenants, are about 29% of the bucket, or roughly 6 to 7% of total volume, not 21.5%. The "Other" line on most maintenance dashboards is overstated; most of those tickets are plumbing, locks, or surfaces in disguise.

Tenants Submit 3.3 Maintenance Requests Per Unit Per Year

A category breakdown tells you what comes in. The per-unit benchmark tells you how often. Across 2024, tenants submitted an average of 3.3 maintenance requests per rental unit per year, and the trend has been climbing for five years.

The trajectory is gradual but consistent. The drivers fit a broader pattern: better mobile intake, faster notifications, renters who expect a tenant portal rather than a phone call, and aging housing stock that surfaces more low-level wear and tear.

Single-family properties run 3.40 requests per unit per year, multifamily 3.23. The gap is small but consistent because single-family tenants report every issue directly with no on-site staff to handle minor items in person.

State-level intensity varies more than property type. Virginia is the highest at 4.35 requests per unit per year. Washington is the lowest at 2.36. Illinois (4.09), Tennessee (3.61), and Texas (3.43) sit on the high end. Older buildings in markets with hot summers and cold winters generate more requests because mechanical systems work harder and surfaces age faster. A Virginia portfolio should budget closer to 4 per unit.

At a rough industry estimate of $200 per request, 3.3 maintenance requests per unit per year is about $660 per unit per year in ongoing maintenance spending, before any major repairs or renovations. That figure belongs in the underwriting model for every investment property, alongside vacancy and rental income assumptions.

Plumbing Has the Highest Repeat Rate

Volume is one half of the picture. The other half is whether a category, once it shows up, keeps showing up. We measured repeat rate as the number of requests per affected rental unit per year in each category.

Plumbing leads volume and leads repeat rate. Once a unit submits a plumbing request, it averages 1.60 plumbing tickets in the same year. A clogged drain is rarely a one-time event. A water heater that throws a code once will throw it again. A leaking faucet under one sink usually means the others are not far behind.

Appliance repair (1.41) and HVAC (1.37) follow the same logic. An older refrigerator fails progressively, not cleanly. A heat pump that needed service in February usually needs follow-up service in March. The categories that dominate volume are the same categories that generate follow-up work, which means the back-end load on a property management workflow is the second, third, and fourth visit on the same address, plus the tenant communication between them.

How Long Each Category Takes to Resolve

Resolution time varies sharply across categories. The fast end clusters around emergency-adjacent work where a tenant is locked out or a system is down. The slow end clusters around capital-intensive work with estimates, owner approval, and multiple visits.

The all-category median is 13.1 days. Half of every repair, across every category, closes inside two weeks. The deep distribution and SLA recommendations by portfolio size sit in the resolution-time benchmark piece.

Response Times: What to Expect (and How Hemlane-Coordinated Compares)

Response and resolution are not the same thing. Response is the first touch, the acknowledgement that someone saw the request. Resolution is when the work is actually done. Tenants notice the first. Property owners care about the second.

The single largest gap in the dataset is not between categories. It is between repair requests that ran through Hemlane's coordinated maintenance service tier and repair requests that landlords managed themselves on the platform.

Hemlane-coordinated repair requests resolve at a median of 10.1 days. Self-managed repair requests resolve at a median of 14.7 days. That is 31% faster. The biggest category-level gaps are in vendor-sourcing-heavy work: locksmith (48% faster), electrical (33%), handywork (32%).

Hemlane's coordinated maintenance is a defined service tier, not a generic coordination label. A repair coordinator on Hemlane's team takes the tenant's request, dispatches a vendor from the vetted local network, manages tenant communication through closure, and tracks the request end to end. The service runs 24/7 across all 50 states.

How Modern Platforms Route Rental Property Maintenance Requests

At 3.3 maintenance requests per rental unit per year, a portfolio of 20 units fields roughly 66 tickets a year. A portfolio of 100 fields 330. That is a workflow problem, not a vendor problem. Modern property management software handles the inflow in four pieces:

Intake. Renters submit repair requests through a tenant portal or mobile app with photos and a category. A clean intake form is the cheapest improvement in maintenance management: a renter who can categorize a water leak or a broken faucet themselves saves the property owner a follow-up trip.

Routing. The platform decides who sees the request first. Rules can be set by category, property, or urgency. Emergency repairs (a burst pipe, a furnace down in winter, anything touching habitability) should route to the highest-priority queue automatically, with real-time notifications.

Tenant communication. Automated tenant updates tell the renter the request was received and when to expect the vendor, without requiring a human to type each message. A platform that can automate move-in instructions for first-time renters, lease agreement reminders, and maintenance status updates streamlines what would otherwise be the day-to-day hassle of DIY property management.

Closure and follow-up. The vendor closes the ticket. The platform asks the tenant to confirm. If anything is incomplete, the system reopens the request. Regular inspections and preventive maintenance schedules feed back into the same system so routine maintenance tasks (filter changes, smoke detector tests, gutter cleaning) stay on a calendar instead of becoming emergency repairs.

Hemlane's request routing, tenant portal, mobile app, and 24/7 coordinated maintenance team handle those four pieces on one platform.

Common Categories in Depth

Plumbing. Water leaks under sinks, slow drains, running toilets, failing water heaters, faucet replacement, garbage disposals. Most arrive as urgent because water on the floor demands a response. A reliable plumber on retainer covers a quarter of all work orders with one relationship.

HVAC. Furnaces in winter, AC in summer, thermostat failures year-round. The HVAC system is the most seasonal category by a wide margin and the one where pre-seasoning vendor capacity matters most.

Appliance Repair. Refrigerators, dishwashers, ovens, washers, dryers. The 1.41 repeat rate reflects the fact that an aging appliance rarely fails once and stays fixed. Most landlords benefit from a clear repair-vs-replace threshold, often around half the cost of replacement.

Electrical. Outlets, switches, breakers, light fixtures, GFCIs. Electrical sits at the middle of the distribution at 13.1 days median. Most issues are quick fixes; what slows them down is scheduling.

Seasonality and Geography

HVAC follows climate, not the calendar. Northern and Midwestern markets peak in January when heating fails. Sun Belt markets peak May through August when AC fails. Western markets peak in June and July. A property management company running a multi-state portfolio needs to pre-season vendor capacity in different months for different markets.

Plumbing resolution time varies about 2x by state. Ohio resolves plumbing fastest at 7.9 days median. Nevada is slowest at 14.7 days. California sits near 11 days, New York 11.3, Florida 9.9.

What This Means for Your Portfolio

The right move depends on the portfolio you actually run.

For operators running across multiple states, the value compounds with standardization: consistent SLAs by category, automated tenant updates, and owner-level reporting on response times and maintenance costs per unit.

About Hemlane

Hemlane is property management software with a built-in service layer. The platform runs the full rental workflow (rent collection, leasing, maintenance, accounting), and on its paid tiers it adds real people behind the software: 24/7 repair coordination, dedicated leasing coordinators, and a vetted local vendor network across all 50 states. That combination of software plus service is what separates Hemlane from software-only tools.

For the maintenance findings in this study, the features that make the data actionable are:

• 24/7 repair coordination with a real coordinator dispatching vendors, handling tenant communication, and tracking closure. This is the cohort behind the 31% faster median.
• Vetted local vendor network across all 50 states, which closes the availability gap for remote landlords and brokerages without local vendor relationships.
• Fair-housing-trained tenant communications, so the conversation with the tenant is handled by someone who knows the rules.
• Per-portfolio response-time reporting, so brokerages can show owners the SLA, not just promise one.

Hemlane serves operators running roughly 10 to 200 rental units across single-family and multifamily portfolios: property management groups scaling their door count, real estate investors and brokerages adding property management as a service line, remote and out-of-state landlords, single-family investors with distributed portfolios, and landlords scaling from DIY to operator.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the most common rental property maintenance requests?

Plumbing leads at 25.4% of all work orders, followed by HVAC (12.3%), appliance repair (12.2%), and electrical (8.4%). The top four categories account for roughly 71% of every maintenance request in the dataset. Common issues within plumbing include water leaks, a failing faucet, slow drains, running toilets, and water heater problems.

How many maintenance requests does a rental unit average per year?

The 2024 benchmark is 3.3 maintenance requests per unit per year, up from 2.93 in 2020. Single-family rentals run slightly higher (3.40) than multifamily (3.23). State-level intensity varies widely, from Virginia at 4.35 (highest) to Washington at 2.36 (lowest). At roughly $200 per request, plan on about $660 per unit per year in maintenance costs before any capital projects.

What is included in routine maintenance for a rental property?

Routine maintenance covers the preventive maintenance tasks that keep a rental property in habitable condition and head off larger property damage. Typical items include HVAC filter changes, smoke detector tests, gutter cleaning, water heater flushes, regular inspections of plumbing and electrical, and pest control treatments. Routine maintenance is scheduled. Repair requests, by contrast, are unscheduled tenant maintenance requests that arrive in response to a specific problem.

How should landlords handle tenant maintenance requests?

The reliable workflow has four parts: intake (a tenant portal or mobile app), routing (rules that send emergency repairs to a high-priority queue with real-time notifications), tenant communication (automated tenant updates so renters know the request was received and when to expect a vendor), and closure (the vendor closes the ticket, the tenant confirms, follow-up reopens it if anything is incomplete). Most of the hassle of DIY property management comes from doing those four steps manually. Property management software handles them on a single platform.

What is the difference between emergency repairs and routine maintenance?

Emergency repairs are time-sensitive issues that affect habitability or risk property damage if left alone: burst pipes, no heat in winter, no AC in extreme heat, gas smells, electrical hazards, major water leaks. These should route to a high-priority queue with same-day response. Routine maintenance is the scheduled preventive work that does not need an immediate vendor visit. A clear separation between the two is the cleanest way to set expectations with renters and vendors.

Does Hemlane's coordinated maintenance speed up response times?

Yes. Hemlane-coordinated repair requests resolve at a 10.1-day median versus 14.7 days for self-managed (31% faster). The largest category-level gaps are in vendor-sourcing-heavy work: locksmith (48% faster), electrical (33%), handywork (32%). The mechanism is a real coordinator who takes the request, dispatches a vendor from the vetted local network, manages tenant communication, and tracks closure.

How does seasonality affect rental property maintenance?

HVAC is the most seasonal category by far. Northern and Midwestern markets peak in January when heating fails. Sun Belt markets peak May through August when AC fails. Western markets peak in June and July. Plumbing is steadier year-round. Pest control climbs February through August. Handywork and general contracting peak in spring and summer.

Methodology

Based on first-party data from our production database, August 2018 through May 2026. The primary dataset is more than 193,000 maintenance requests, of which 178,780 were closed at the time of analysis. Category breakdowns reflect the 185,000+ requests with a category assigned. The per-unit benchmark of 3.3 requests per unit per year is the 2024 figure, computed across 10,829 units. Per-affected-unit repeat rates are computed at the unit level for units that submitted at least one request in the category during 2024. Resolution time is the elapsed wall-clock time from “created_at” to the “updated_at” timestamp when status changed to "Closed." Wall-clock time includes idle periods (waiting for parts, tenant availability, owner approval). Reopened requests show the last closure timestamp. The "Other" remapping was done by keyword analysis of the request title field. The "Hemlane-coordinated" cohort consists of requests routed through Hemlane's coordinated maintenance service tier; the "self-managed" cohort consists of requests managed by the landlord on the platform without coordination. All figures are first-party data; no third-party sources were used, and no personally identifying tenant information was included. View the full report here.