It is nineteen degrees and your tenant calls on a Sunday night. The furnace is out.
You look up an HVAC company. You leave a message. You leave another one Monday morning. By Wednesday you still have not heard back, your tenant has called you six times, and you are starting to wonder if you are the problem.
You are not the problem. But you do have one, and it is probably not the one you think.
You do not have a contractor problem. You have a bench problem.
Let me back up and show you how we got here.
What people think happens when something breaks
Here is what most owners believe the process looks like:
- The furnace quits.
- You look up an HVAC company.
- You call them.
- They answer.
- They come out.
- They fix it right the first time.
- They send you a clear invoice.
- You pay it and go back to your life.
Ordering food delivery works like this, contractors don’t and they never have.
What actually happens
I have been managing rentals in north central Pennsylvania for 22 years. One Focus Property Management handles more than 600 units across five counties, out of our office in the Williamsport area. Here are some real things that have happened to us. Not to a friend of a friend. To us.
- A contractor we gave $70,000 of work to every year just stopped answering the phone. No fight. No falling out. He simply stopped.
- Another one decided he could only be reached on Fridays. We sent an email on a Thursday so Friday would go smoothly. He lost it.
- A roofer did a job for us and gave us a written guarantee. The roof leaked. He ghosted us and blocked every number in our office. We got paid by his insurance company, and only because we had collected his insurance information before he ever got the job.
- We hired a contractor we had used hundreds of times over 12 years. We gave him a $9,000 deposit on a $20,000 job. He did not do the work. He barely even started. We had to get the state police involved to get that deposit back.
And then there is the everyday stuff that never stops:
- No written estimates.
- No callbacks.
- An invoice with one line on it and a big number at the bottom.
- No show, no text, no reason.
If you do not already have a relationship with someone, expect days to get a call back. Days. Meanwhile your tenant has no heat and your phone is ringing.
In defense of good contractors
This is not a hit piece on the trades. The good ones have earned better than that.
Good contractors already have work lined up. They are not sitting by the phone hoping a guy with three rentals calls. They might squeeze in your emergency, but understand that they are taking a risk on you too. They do not know if you will pay. They do not know if you will be a nightmare. They have been burned by owners the same way owners get burned by them.
So be a good consumer. Make it easy to work for you.
- Say clearly what you want done.
- Answer your own phone.
- Pay fast.
- Do not nickel and dime a fair price.
- Do not make them chase you for a decision.
Contractors get to choose who they work for, and they are making that decision based on even less information than you have on them. At least you can check references, the BBB, or Google reviews. They cannot easily do the same research on you.
The real problem: who is on your bench?
Most investors have a small handful of vendors they know. Usually it is a handy friend, or maybe someone they have some experience with. They think they are in good shape when they know at least one vendor per trade.
But one guy per trade is not enough. The day he ghosts you, retires, blows the engine in his truck, moves, or lands a big steady contract with a home builder, you have nothing. And you will find out on the coldest night of the year.
We keep two vendors per trade, in every market we work. On purpose. That means we have to spread work around instead of handing it all to one favorite. This is not about loyalty to a vendor. We are loyal to our clients and to our standards, and holding those standards means we are always building and refining our vendor pool.
A bench is how you hold a standard
Think about what happens when you only have one plumber. He does sloppy work. He shows up whenever. He will not put anything in writing. Are you going to fire him? No. You cannot. You need him tomorrow.
So you will do what everybody does. You will lower your standard and call it being flexible.
You can only hold a standard if you are willing to let someone go. And you will only be willing to let someone go if you have someone else to call.
That is why we are always trying out new vendors, even when nothing is wrong. Especially when nothing is wrong. The time to build the bench is when you do not need it.
What this means if you own rentals around here
North central Pennsylvania is not a big market. The good trades here are busy, they know each other, and they are not advertising. If you own a couple of doors in Williamsport, Montoursville, Jersey Shore or anywhere nearby and you have one guy for everything, you are one truck breakdown away from a very bad week.
Building a real bench takes years. It takes giving work away that you would rather hand to your favorite. It takes trying people out and letting some of them go. It is slow, unglamorous work, and it is most of what separates a rental that runs from a rental that runs you.
Three things to take away
- Hiring a contractor is nothing like ordering a service. Plan for delays, bad communication, and work you have to check.
- Collect insurance information before anyone starts a job, not after something goes wrong. That one habit has saved us thousands.
- One vendor per trade is the same as none. Two is a bench. A bench is the only reason you will ever be able to hold a standard.
If you are tired of chasing contractors
That is most of what we do. We have spent over 14 years building and perfecting our vendor bench so our owners never have to worry. If you want to talk about what that looks like for your property, reach out to us.
