Rental Property Contractors Raising Rates
Sam’s question: Apparently Sam is concerned that his housekeeper crew just raised the fees to $48 an hour. And Sam feels that it’s getting very expensive to get his rental properties cleaned. And he was saying that they’re now charging as much as he pays his handy person to do work.
We actually pay our housekeepers equal to what we pay handy person because it’s actually a lot of work. So to clean an oven to clean a bathtub, that’s badly mildew. That’s massive work. It’s definitely much more work than going in, putting a clip into a screen door or even really changing a faucet or any kind of handyman work.
Obviously a plumber, electrician, a mason; you’re paying for knowledge, plus you’re paying for their expertise. And these guys are highly skilled and highly knowledgeable, and they deserve extra money because they know things, but so do housekeepers. It’s just not easy to clean a house and you do have to know certain things.
I can definitely see paying a skilled/knowledgeable professional more, but as far as effort goes, we tend to pay our housekeepers on a much higher scale than we might pay a handy person, including even a painter. We don’t pay them as much as we pay the housekeeper.
If there’s a ceiling involved, that’s massive work. That’s really hard work. We’ll pay the painter more for that kind of work. But we expect to pay a housekeeper more than we would pay a painter, just because the effort is much, much less with painting a property than it is to clean a property.
This is Joe White, trying to answer your real estate questions to the best I can. Good luck!!!
