Vendor Portal
Author: Mark Ainely | Partner GC Realty & Development & Co-Host Straight Up Chicago Investor Podcast
If you manage rental properties in Chicagoland and you are not running pre-season AC checks every spring, you are paying for it every June. That is what I found when I broke down the data for the last 2 years for our portfolio here at GC Realty & Development.
At GC Realty, we track every maintenance request across our portfolio. When we looked at two full summers of HVAC work orders covering May through October, one pattern came through clearly: June is when everything breaks at once, emergency dispatches spike, costs climb, and tenants are the most frustrated. And a meaningful number of those June crises started as small, undetected problems that a spring tune-up would have caught.
What the Data Actually Shows
Looking across our 2024 and 2025 AC work order data, the volume pattern jumped right out at me. May brings a steady wave of early-season complaints, units that sat idle all winter and are now being fired up for the first time. Most of those are manageable: low priority, a few days to resolve, standard vendor dispatch.
Then June arrives and the dynamic shifts entirely. Work order volume surges. Emergency designations multiply. Residents report indoor temperatures in the 80s and 90s. Vendors get dispatched same-day. The language in the work orders changes too: heat waves, infants, elderly residents, pets, medical conditions. June is not just busier than May. It is categorically different in urgency, complexity, and cost.
Several factors converge to make June so punishing. First, heat waves in Chicagoland tend to arrive in mid to late June with little warning, pushing outdoor temps past 85 and 90 degrees for days at a stretch. Second, systems that were limping along fine at 72 degrees in May fail completely when they are asked to cool against 93-degree heat. Third, the demand on HVAC vendors spikes across the entire metro at the same time, meaning dispatch windows stretch and prices reflect the surge.
The Quiet Warning Signs That Show Up in May
Here is what landlords who are not paying close attention tend to miss. A significant portion of the June emergencies we see in our data are connected to properties where a May work order already existed. The May report says the AC is weak or cycling oddly or not quite reaching temperature. The resolution gets delayed, or the unit gets a partial fix, or the underlying issue goes undiagnosed. Then the first real heat wave hits and that same unit becomes an emergency.
We also see May work orders that describe exactly the symptoms a pre-season inspection would have caught: dirty condenser coils that have not been cleaned since the unit went into service years earlier, refrigerant levels that have been gradually declining, compressors that are starting but straining, thermostats that have never been properly calibrated. These are not surprise failures. They are deferred maintenance arriving with the heat.
What a Pre-Season AC Check Actually Covers
A proper pre-season HVAC inspection in April or early May is not the same as sending a tech out to respond to a complaint. It is proactive, systematic, and designed to catch issues before the load is on the system. For central air systems and window or wall units alike, here is what a thorough check should include:
Condenser coil cleaning to remove the season of debris, cottonwood, and buildup that accumulates on outdoor units
Refrigerant level check to identify slow leaks before they become full failures under peak demand
Capacitor and contactor inspection, since these are among the most common failure points during high-load periods
Filter replacement or confirmation that tenants are maintaining filters on schedule
Thermostat calibration and verification that controls are communicating properly with the system
Drain line inspection to prevent condensation leaks, which become one of the most common June complaints in humid weather
Visual inspection of the air handler, blower motor, and refrigerant lines for signs of wear or ice buildup
For landlords managing multiple units at the same property, the economics of doing this proactively are straightforward. A clean-and-check through a qualified HVAC vendor typically costs a fraction of a single emergency same-day dispatch. Multiply that across the number of units you would have to scramble to address during a June heat wave and the math is not close.
The Vendor Availability Problem Is Real
One thing property owners outside of professional management sometimes underestimate is how dramatically HVAC vendor availability tightens during peak demand. When it is 92 degrees in Chicago and dozens of properties across Cook, DuPage, and Kane counties are calling for emergency AC service simultaneously, dispatch windows lengthen even for established vendor relationships.
The landlords and property managers who get the fastest response in June are not the ones who waited until something broke. They are the ones who built vendor relationships during the slower shoulder months, kept their systems in documented good condition, and earned priority status through consistent work. Pre-season inspections are part of that relationship-building. Vendors know which clients are organized and which ones only call in a panic.
What This Means for Illinois Landlords Specifically
Illinois landlord-tenant law and Chicago's residential landlord-tenant ordinance both establish the expectation that landlords maintain habitable conditions in rental units, and that includes functional cooling during extreme heat. When indoor temperatures climb above certain thresholds and a landlord has not made a good-faith effort to address the issue promptly, the legal and financial exposure goes beyond the cost of the repair itself.
Pre-season inspections create a documented record that a landlord has been proactive. That documentation matters if a dispute arises. It also reduces the likelihood of the dispute occurring in the first place, because the system is far less likely to fail catastrophically when it has been professionally serviced and is entering the season in known good condition.
If Your Unit Was Manufactured Before 2010, Replacement Is No Longer Optional
Pre-season inspections will catch a lot of problems. But there is one category of unit where even a perfect inspection cannot change the underlying math: any central air system manufactured before approximately 2010 that still operates on R-22 refrigerant, commonly known as Freon.
Under EPA regulations, the production and import of R-22 was fully banned in the United States as of January 1, 2020. New equipment using R-22 had already been prohibited from manufacture starting in 2010. That means the only R-22 available today comes from recovered or stockpiled supplies, and that supply is shrinking every year as old systems are retired and existing inventory is drawn down.
The result is predictable: the cost per pound of R-22 has climbed sharply since the phaseout and continues to rise as supply tightens. What once cost $10 to $15 per pound, we are now seeing $150 to $250 per pound and that number is not coming back down. Every pound of R-22 that gets used to recharge an aging system is a pound that will not be available next season. And here is the part that should really give landlords pause: every dollar spent on Freon is a dollar that could have gone toward a new system. You are not fixing the problem, you are financing a delay.
For landlords, this creates a compounding problem. A pre-2010 unit that develops a slow refrigerant leak is not just an HVAC issue. It is an escalating cost that gets worse every time the system needs a recharge. The first call might feel manageable. The second call the following summer is more expensive. By the third call, the cumulative refrigerant cost alone may exceed what a replacement would have cost at the outset, and the system is still aging, still inefficient, and still running on borrowed time.
We see this pattern in our own work order data. Units with prior refrigerant service appearing again the following season with the same complaint. The repair that felt like a fix was actually just a delay. A pre-season inspection on a pre-2010 R-22 system should include an honest conversation with your HVAC vendor about remaining useful life. In many cases the answer is that replacement before this summer is the right financial decision, not a luxury.
The good news is that modern R-410A and R-32 systems run significantly more efficiently, qualify for energy rebates in many cases, and eliminate the R-22 cost exposure entirely. The upfront cost of replacement is real, but so is the cost of continuing to pour an increasingly scarce and expensive refrigerant into an old system that is one compressor failure away from being unserviceable anyway.
Timing Matters More Than You Think
The window for effective pre-season AC service in Chicagoland is roughly March 15 through May 15. That range allows vendors to complete work before the first warm stretch hits, gives time for any parts that need ordering to arrive, and avoids the scheduling crunch that starts as soon as temperatures get above 70 for a few consecutive days.
Landlords who schedule pre-season service in April are in a fundamentally different position than those who wait until the first tenant call in late May. By May, HVAC vendors are already getting busy. By June, you are competing with every other property manager and homeowner in the metro for the same dispatch slots.
Don't Go At This Alone
I will be transparent here. Up until this point, we have made fall furnace and boiler servicing mandatory for our 500+ investor clients, but spring AC cleaning has been optional. Looking at this data, that needs to change. The pattern is too clear to ignore. We are pushing spring preventative maintenance much harder starting this year, and we would encourage any landlord reading this to make the same shift before the next cooling season arrives.
Managing HVAC maintenance across a rental portfolio requires organized systems, trusted vendor relationships, and the operational bandwidth to actually execute pre-season service before the season arrives. For landlords managing multiple units independently, that is easier said than done.
At GC Realty and Development, we track maintenance history, coordinate pre-season HVAC service, and have vendor relationships across our 1,500 unit portfolio spanning Cook, DuPage, Kane, and surrounding counties that allow us to respond efficiently when issues do arise. If you are spending every June in reactive mode and want a different approach, we would be glad to talk through what professional property management looks like for your portfolio.
