Tips to Having a Good Handyman

Tenants and Toilets are the two key complaints that most landlords talk about. I believe that having a dependable, thorough, and honest handyman that has good workmanship is an absolute must whether you own 2 or 20 investment properties.

Your handyman should be able to fix most items in your properties. Maybe just as important, he should admit
when a project is not his specialty and should be outsourced. Build trust where you can rely on his judgement on what needs to be fixed and how it should get done.
Find a handyman that lives near your properties. You will be very thankful for this when your tenant calls at 7:00 at night about a plugged toilet or a furnace not running or any other number of issues that require immediate response. It is great to be able to simply call your handyman and ask him to swing over and take care of the problem.
Give him enough work that he sees you as his primary customer. This should keep him wanting to please you by taking those 7:00 pm calls to unplug a toilet! Conversely, unless you can sustain him 100% indefinitely, make sure that he does not rely on your work alone as when you slow down, he will be concerned about putting food on the table.
If your volume warrants it, negotiate a reduced per hour rate. Discuss eliminating trip and overtime charges.
When you go on vacation, consider paying your handyman to be your vacation buddy. You should decide if you will give the handyman the keys to the properties. When I go on vacation, I like to keep all the keys in my garage. In an event that he absolutely needs keys, I will then tell him where they are and give him the combo to my garage door.
Find your handyman through referrals with your real estate agent, check the hardware store bulletin boards, and scan Craig’s (or Angie’s) List.

Having a consistent handyman can be a crucial addition to your investment property team. He should free you up from having to do all your maintenance and potentially save you money instead of having to call a trade person (ie: plumber, carpenter) to fix something small.

4 comments

#1SamJuly 23, 2008, 1:33 pm

Also, try to find someone local to your community — craigslist.org, angieslist.com, helptohire.com should me able to help you with that.

#2Indian Stock MarketNovember 24, 2008, 7:05 am

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#3Handyman tipsAugust 17, 2010, 12:07 pm

Great information on finding a good handy man for you. This tips will be a big help for people looking for a handy man. handy man home repair site will give tips and guide in repairing home problems. Hope it will help a lot!

#4HandymanJanuary 21, 2011, 5:40 am

The first and foremost requirement of a handyman is that he should a man who can use common sense and should be able to plan the stategies according to the demand of time.

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