It is 2am and unit 4B has water coming through the ceiling
The pipe burst an hour ago. Your tenant has rung twice and is now ringing the number on the lease. GreetKeeper picks up, gets the water shut off, and wakes your contractor, the one who holds the keys to that building.
Caller
“Unit 4B, Halstead House. Water's coming through the ceiling in the bathroom and it's running down the wall now. I've knocked on 5B upstairs and nobody's answering.”
What happened next
- Read the shutoff location for Halstead House, caller confirmed the riser valve was closed
- Escalated: uncontained water, occupied unit below, vacant response upstairs
- Texted Ray, the on-call plumber for Halstead, the unit and the lockbox code
- Logged a follow-up for the office on 5B access at 9am
Nobody is awake, and the water does not care
The thing that makes this call hard isn't the hour. It's that whoever answers for you has about ninety seconds to do something useful before the damage doubles.
Your on-call rota probably works like this: the phone diverts to whoever drew the short straw, they answer in the dark, and they either drive out or they don't. Half the value of that person is just being awake enough to say turn the water off.
A leak that runs for six hours costs you the ceiling below it, the flooring, a dehumidifier rental and an insurance conversation with your owner. Stopped in the first ten minutes, it costs you a plumber's night rate. That gap is your whole argument for answering at 2am.
GreetKeeper answers on the first ring at any hour, reads the shutoff instruction you wrote for that specific building, and texts the contractor whose name sits against it. Your on-call person stops being the switchboard and goes back to being the tradesperson.
What gets somebody out of bed, and what waits
You write this list once, usually lifted straight out of your management agreement. Here's the shape most portfolios land on, and why each line sits where it does.
| The call | Overnight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Water running and not containable | Dispatch now | Damage compounds by the hour and reaches the units below |
| No heat, outdoor temperature under your threshold | Dispatch now | Habitability, and in most leases a clock starts running |
| Gas smell | Dispatch after the utility | Your wording sends them to the gas emergency line first, then logs it |
| Entry door or lock not securing | Dispatch now | A building left open overnight is a different class of problem |
| Total power loss to a unit | Dispatch now | Medical equipment and food loss, and it rarely fixes itself |
| Toilet blocked, second bathroom available | Morning | Inconvenient overnight, not urgent, and your caller can be told why |
| Dripping tap, running cistern | Next working day | Costs pennies a night and nothing is at risk |
| Appliance out, no leak | Next working day | The fridge is the exception if you supply it and it is full |
The four things it does before your contractor's phone buzzes
In that order, because the second stops your damage and the first is what makes the second possible.
Pin the building and the unit
Both, read back out loud. If you run a Halstead House and a Halstead Court, you need that confirmed before anything else: the wrong address at 2am costs you a night rate and leaves your tenant standing in water.
Get the water or the power off
It reads your shutoff guidance for that building: where the riser valve is, which cupboard the consumer unit lives in, whether there is a stop tap under the kitchen sink. Your words, not an improvised guess.
Match the fault to your overnight rule
The list above, applied as written. A match on a dispatch line goes to your contractor; anything else becomes a logged request with a timestamp and the tenant told when somebody will call.
Wake exactly one person
The contractor on your rota for that building, with the unit, the fault in the tenant's own words and the access notes. Nobody else's phone lights up, which is the part your team notices first.
The arithmetic on one avoided night call
Starter is $49 a month for 200 answered calls, then 45 cents a call. Under about fifty doors, forwarding evenings and weekends, you'll usually stay inside it. Several hundred doors gives you real overnight volume and sits on Professional at $149 for 750 calls, then 35 cents.
Both numbers are smaller than one contractor callout at a Sunday rate. The month you send somebody out for a dripping tap because the on-call person couldn't tell at 3am, you've spent more than the year.
Somebody of yours still has to drive
What comes up when a rota changes hands
What if the on-call contractor doesn't answer the text?
You nominate a second number and the escalation moves on to it. That fallback is one of the settings we're confirming against the built product before launch, so ask to see it in the demo rather than taking this page's word for it.
Can different buildings wake different people?
Yes, that's the normal setup. Contractor, access notes and shutoff instructions are held per building, so a portfolio with three plumbers across four sites behaves correctly at 3am.
Does the tenant know they're talking to an assistant?
They do if you switch the announcement on, and you should. Maine requires clear notice in trade, the setting is one line in the greeting, and tenants tend to be calmer once they know what they've reached.
What happens to the calls that aren't emergencies?
They become logged requests with the unit, the fault and the time, waiting for your office. Nobody drives anywhere and nobody's phone rings. That's most of your overnight volume.
Can I keep my own team answering during office hours?
Yes, and most portfolios do exactly that. Forward the line at six and take it back at nine, or forward on no-answer so it only picks up the ones your office misses.
The rest of the maintenance line
Hear it take a 2am leak
Your shutoff wording, your overnight rules, two minutes.