The four bands worth having
Most firms operate with two, emergency and not-emergency, and that is what causes the arguments. Four bands is the smallest number that actually matches reality.
| Band | The test | Typical calls |
|---|---|---|
| Life safety | A person is at risk right now | Gas smell, fire, carbon monoxide, exposed wiring, no heat in freezing conditions, flooding into living space |
| Dispatch tonight | Active damage, or an essential service is gone and it worsens by morning | Burst pipe contained but running, sewage backup, no water, failed lock on an exterior door |
| Next business day | Real fault, nothing gets worse overnight | One broken appliance, a slow leak into a bucket, a dead outlet, heating out in mild weather |
| Routine | Wear, cosmetic, or a request rather than a fault | Dripping tap, squeaking door, a request for a new fixture |
The one you cannot copy from anyone
Habitability thresholds are jurisdictional and you should not take them from a blog post, including this one. Minimum temperatures, response windows and what legally counts as uninhabitable vary by state and city, and they change. Get yours from your lease, your local rules or your adviser, and write the number down where your after-hours process can see it.
This is not a disclaimer for its own sake. We built an after-hours agent and an early draft of it carried 40F as the no-heat threshold, because that number appears all over the internet. It came out. It is now a blank the operator fills in, marked as jurisdiction-specific, because we are not a legal source and neither is the consensus of the internet.
Why the vague message is the expensive one
The call that costs you money is rarely the dramatic one. Gas smell is easy: everybody knows what to do. The expensive one is “there is water” at 11pm with no other detail.
Handled badly, that becomes three questions back to the tenant: what kind of leak, which unit, can we enter. A tenant standing in water answers the first and gives up, and now you have a half-classified ticket and an angry resident.
Handled well, it is one question, the one that actually changes the classification, plus a callback number if you do not have it. Everything else missing goes to the coordinator, because your office already knows its own addresses.
We learned that one the same way: by watching an agent ask three questions and realising the instruction set had no cap on it. Capped at two, permanently. The whole record of what broke and what changed ships with the after-hours maintenance agent.
Write it down once, and the 11pm argument stops
Whether a person or an agent does the first pass, the value is in the written standard, not the tool. A standard means the classification is the same on a Tuesday as on a holiday weekend, the same for a new coordinator as for you, and defensible when an owner asks why a callout happened.
If you want the agent version, it reads the message, classifies it against your thresholds, writes the work order and drafts the tenant reply. It does not dispatch, call a vendor, approve a cost or decide habitability. A person sends everything.
Questions
Is no heat always an emergency?
It depends on your jurisdiction and your lease, which is exactly why it should never be hardcoded. Many places set a minimum temperature and a timeframe. Get the number from your lease, your local rules or your adviser, and write it down once.
Who should decide, the coordinator or the system?
A written standard decides the routine cases so your coordinator can spend judgment on the ones that need it. The standard is not there to remove the human, it is there to stop the same argument happening at 11pm every week.
What about a tenant who says everything is an emergency?
A written standard protects you here too. When the classification comes from a rule the tenant was told about at move-in, the conversation is about the rule rather than about whether you care.
Get the after-hours agent
It classifies against your thresholds, writes the work order, and drafts the reply. It comes with the community, which has a seven day free trial.
See the after-hours maintenance agent
New here? The owner statement agent is free, so you can judge the standard before paying for anything.