Handyman

I have recently run ads for handymen or handypersons in two different areas of my state and the response has been impressive. It is amazing how many skilled workers are starving right now.

Many of these folks worked in the mobile home industry in the past in positions like service managers for large mobile home dealerships. Others have been in the housing business for 30 plus years. Several were college grads with degrees focusing on Green building and experience in all kinds of construction and repair. Some worked for large, local electric repair companies, others worked for plumbers.

These guys show up in utility vans and set up trucks that are stocked with tools and ready to go to work. Ever couple of years I would run an ad like this for a helper and every drunk in town would call. None had their own trucks or tools.

This economic recession and particularly the reduction in new housing construction has flooded the market with skilled labor. Now you still have to screen these folks because not all are as skilled or reliable as they say they are, but I can tell you that the difference I am seeing in skills and maturity is unbelievable.

Many of these guys have 20 or 30 years of mobile home and construction experience. Many were maintenance personel in large manufacturing companies. Most of them show up with their own helper!

As most here know, I do nearly all of my own repairs and have since the beginning. I have had a couple of handymen that I work with as helpers but few have ever done work without my being there.

For many here who are still doing the work themselves or are just getting started, this may be a time to hire these guys for $10-$15 an hour and let them speed up the vacancy turnarounds or handle emergency calls. Let them fix the broken water lines or section 8 repair lists.

If you are just getting started you can learn a great deal from working with these folks. That is how I got started. I didn’t know how to fix anything when I bought my first park. I learned by working with and talking to handymen and contractors. Consider it on the job training seminars that you pay $15 per hour for but you also get your property fix and you get trained on your very own homes.

For those who are commuting to their parks over some distance this may be the time to hire a handyman on a “as-needed” basis to handle routine and emergency calls for you. If you are driving a decent distance then the gas savings alone will offset much of the handyman’s cost. The peace of mind of having someone close to the property for water breaks is huge for me.

I will still do the major repairs either by myself or hire the handyman to assist. Using them to assist me in turn around properties or vacancy turnovers will greatly speed up the process. By returning that property back to the market faster I can offset the money spent on the handyman. For example if a property goes vacant near the end of the month it might take me a couple of weeks to get it back to market standards (if it needs to be upgraded with landlord friendly repairs) and then a couple of weeks to get the tenant I want and for them to actually move in. All told you could be out of money coming in for 2 months due to the move out, rehab, marketing and actual move in date.

If the handyman can help me to turn it around faster or even do some jobs while I’m not there then all the more better.

Keep in mind that I only work 2 days per week on my properties which means I get sometimes get pulled off a rehab to go fix other routine calls or complete section 8 punch lists. For me to be able to have someone working on the rehab or running routine calls while I focus on the rehab is big.

Try running an ad on craigslist and see what response you get. My ad wasn’t anything magical so don’t worry about the wording too much. Just be sure to explain that this the work will be done as-needed (not full or part time employment) and that you need someone with experience in mobile home repairs who has their own truck and tools. I put in the ad that I pay $10-$15 per hour.

Within a two hours or so of running that ad I had 5 email responses (I wanted emails with resumes or description of experience) instead of having folks call me right away. I am still receiving responses.

One thing to keep in mind is that screening will be very important. I have talked to professional handymen (the expensive guys) who darn near starved when the market was flooded by construction workers when the housing market slumped. The problem was these guys all ran out and put up their “handyman” signs and would underbid the pro’s but they did not have the discipline or exprience to do the job right and the pro’s would end up coming in later to fix the problem right. Most of the pro’s are back to more work than they can handle because of this.

That is why we need to be there at first to see the work these folks are doing. If you don’t know how to fix things then get Mike Scarbrough’s video series here and you will know how to fix just about anything in or on a mobile home. No one will be able to snow you on repairs. You will be able to explain to them how you want it done and if they do it any other way you will know and can replace them with someone else.

Tony

Good stuff Tony. I guess my local economy is in a bit better shape as the $10-$15 hr doesn’t get you skilled tradesmen with tools and trucks. It does seem that $20-$30 hr does. With this type of help, more pressure is on me to schedule the job and to get the right materials. But the quality of work, lack of callbacks, no hassles while job is underway, no wasted material, speed, and best of all less overall cost make it a no brainer.

I think that in many cases hiring the busiest tradesmen with the highest rates in town results in the lowest overall cost.

RE: Handyman

Tony,

I just ran such an ad last night and had almost 40 responses before the ad was flagged and removed early this morning.

The job market is really tough in the sector and there are obviously some qualified folks willing to work for something we can afford.

I’ll be going through the responses and trying some out on a package of homes I just close on.

Michael(KCMO)

[QUOTE=Michael(KCMO);882967]Tony,

I just ran such an ad last night and had almost 40 responses before the ad was flagged and removed early this morning.

The job market is really tough in the sector and there are obviously some qualified folks willing to work for something we can afford.

I’ll be going through the responses and trying some out on a package of homes I just close on.

Michael(KCMO)[/QUOTE]

Michael,

I have worked now with a couple of the folks that responded to my handyman ad on CL and I must say that so far things have gone very well. I worked 4 hours today with a guy and we got a ton of stuff done. He jumped right in and didn’t stop for a second. Just good, hard work.

Tony

One advantage of hiring and working with new, skilled handymen is that I still get to learn new tricks. Even though I have been working on mobile homes for more than 10 years I always seek a new idea, a better idea and certainly more “landlord friendly” ideas.

Working with skilled, experienced handymen recently has proven to me that much of what we do is simply the natural evolution of repairs. For those willing to try new ideas I find that our experiences and solutions are often very similar but every now and then I find a new tweak to an idea or a new product or solution that fits my criteria but that had not yet discovered because I was working with the same people for years. New blood and new ideas has certainly sparked my interest in making repairs again.

Tony