Pooling three site techs regionally, when the 118-unit is the one that could erase the savings

A scenario worth working through with the room. A manager runs 410 units across three properties for two owners, fee at 3.5% of collected revenue plus a turn coordination fee. The owner on the bigger asset has been pressing on controllable expenses since the summer, and maintenance payroll is the largest line the manager actually controls. Right now each property has its own tech. Three techs, roughly $58k loaded each with the truck allowance and phone. Work orders last quarter came in at 618 across the book, average time to close 1.8 days. The two newer properties sit around 1.2 days. The 118-unit built in the early 70s drags the average to 2.9 on its own and eats about 44% of total work order volume with 29% of the units. The plan as costed: two techs plus one lead in a shared pool, dispatch software at about $2.10 per unit per month, tablets, one shared van. That is roughly $52k off payroll annually with no backfill, minus $10k of software and vehicle, so call it $40k. Split by property that is real money on a 6.1% cap. What is hard to get comfortable with is the old building. Its calls are mostly cast iron drain backups and boiler trouble that the current tech knows by memory. A pooled tech shows up cold. If turn times slip and renewals drop two points on that asset, the savings are gone and then some, and that is the owner who talks to other owners. Options on the desk: pool all three, pool the two newer and leave the old one alone, or keep bodies where they are and just buy the dispatch software to fix routing. The middle one is tempting, and it leaves the worst property with the worst economics untouched.