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Habitia Help

Lifecycle rules

Habitia watches your assets — appliances, HVAC units, water heaters — and raises an alert when one is likely at the end of its useful life. Lifecycle rules are the per-category settings that drive those signals, and the per-category replacement cost the forecast falls back to when an asset has no cost of its own.

You don’t have to touch this tab. Habitia ships with reasonable defaults for every asset category. Edit only if your experience says otherwise — for example, if you know the dryers in your buildings tend to last longer (or shorter) than the default, or if a new AC costs more in your market.

Open Settings → Lifecycle Rules.

Note: Anyone with the assets: write permission can edit rows; assets: delete is needed to reset them. Other roles can view but not change.

What the table shows

A row per asset category — the same categories you pick when adding an asset: HVAC, appliance, plumbing, electrical, flooring, wall covering, ceiling, window, door, lock, cabinet, countertop, fixture, safety device, exterior, structural, other. Six columns:

  • Category — the asset type the row applies to.
  • Life (mo) — expected useful life in months. Used when the asset itself has no Expected life. Past 80% of it the asset is Late-life; past 100% it is Beyond EOL, even if it hasn’t broken.
  • Repair cap (%) — the share of the replacement cost at which repairing stops being worth it. Habitia looks at recent money: a single repair, or all repairs inside the repeat window added together. Example: 60% means if one repair, or the last 12 months of repairs, reach 60% of what a new unit costs, Habitia flags it as replace-not-repair. At 80% the signal becomes urgent and raises an alert.
  • Repeat window (mo) — the rolling window (in months) used to count repeat repairs and to add up recent repair spend.
  • Repeat count — number of repair or service events on the asset within the window that signals a pattern. Example: window 12, count 3 = “3 or more repairs in the last 12 months”.
  • Default replacement cost — what one unit of this category costs to replace, used only when the asset has no Estimated replacement cost and no purchase + installation cost. Rows showing ≈ are platform estimates — adjust them to your market.

Screenshot: Lifecycle Rules table with the defaults

Tip: A category showing the Custom badge has been edited from defaults. Categories without the badge are using the system defaults.

How an asset gets flagged

Any of these, on its own, raises a signal on the asset’s Lifecycle panel:

  1. Age — the asset has used 80% of its expected life (approaching) or passed it (past end of life).
  2. Expensive repairs — recent repair spend (one repair, or the window total) reached the Repair cap.
  3. Repeat repairs — Repeat count or more repair/service events within the Repeat window. Work orders completed against the asset count automatically; so do manual repair events and completed scheduled services.
  4. Condition — an inspection (or an edit) recorded the asset as poor or failed.
  5. Overdue service — a scheduled service tied to the asset is past its due date.

Lifetime repair spend between 25% and the cap is a watch signal only — money spread over fourteen years is not the same as money spent in the last twelve months.

Past end of life, an urgent repair-vs-replace, a failed condition and repeat repairs also raise a Smart alert (see What alerts Habitia raises). Alerts clear themselves when the condition no longer holds.

When to customize a row

Most landlords use the defaults. A few cases where overriding makes sense:

  • You’re in a coastal area. Salt air kills appliances faster. Click Apply Coastal / salt air preset: it shortens expected life by 25% on HVAC, appliances, exterior, windows, doors, locks, fixtures and electrical, and leaves the rest alone. It applies over the platform baseline, so re-applying it is harmless.
  • You buy used appliances. The system defaults assume new. If you typically buy refurbished, drop the life accordingly.
  • You’re conservative on repairs. If you’d rather replace at 40% repair cost than 60%, lower the cap.
  • Your market is pricier. Set the Default replacement cost to what you actually pay, so assets you haven’t priced individually still forecast realistically.

Editing a row

  1. Click Edit on the row you want to change.
  2. Update Life, Repair cap, Repeat window, Repeat count or Default replacement cost.
  3. Click Save. A green check appears next to the row name for a few seconds.

The Custom badge now appears on this row. Every asset in that category is re-evaluated on its next sync (any edit, work order or inspection, or the sweep that runs every four hours).

Reverting to default

If you’ve customized a row and want to undo it, click Reset (only shown on customized rows). Confirm. The row returns to the system default and the Custom badge disappears. Reset all overrides at the top does the same for every customized row at once.

The version stamp

At the top-right of the table you’ll see the version of Habitia’s underlying defaults (for example 2026-10). Your customizations are tracked separately. If a future Habitia update changes the system defaults, your customized rows are untouched; only the categories you haven’t overridden get the new values.

What’s next