Investor · Saint Louis, MO · Member since 2016 · 970 posts · 1k+ votes
Hi All,
I am finishing up my first year of real estate investing with buy and holds. I'll be at 10 units and over 30 tenants so I know things will get hectic especially with me being in a full time job.
My question for those experienced, who did you hire first and how did you organize/pay them. What kind of work did they do and what kind of hours were they given? Paid per project or by the hour?
Now I already understand the importance of having on-call handymen, contractors, lawyers, etc.
was your new hire just a personal assistant who sat at home making phone calls for you, organizing docs?
Residential Real Estate Investor · Kansas City, MO · Member since 2014 · 10k+ posts · 5k+ votes
9y
Our first hire was a maintenance tech as on-call handymen aren't the most reliable (you would need to pay per hour). A lot of it depends on what part of the business you plan on doing and how much you can trust your on-call handymen with things like late night issues.
Residential Real Estate Investor · Kansas City, MO · Member since 2014 · 10k+ posts · 5k+ votes
9y
Our first hire was a maintenance tech as on-call handymen aren't the most reliable (you would need to pay per hour). A lot of it depends on what part of the business you plan on doing and how much you can trust your on-call handymen with things like late night issues.
Investor · Saint Louis, MO · Member since 2016 · 970 posts · 1k+ votes
9y
Thanks! is the maintenance tech like your full time guy who only works for you essentially and no one else? I feel like ill need hundreds of tenants before I can pay a salary haha...
Could talk to a bunch of different handymen and get quotes based on the amount of work you will bring them? Like, "What kind of hourly rate will you offer me if I give you exclusivity on 10 properties and growing?" Landing a deal for 10+ houses could be a good chunk of work for some handymen and you might be able to get competitive rates that way. Also, you will not have to put them on staff. Property management companies get competitive rates because of their volume but still don't have to put handymen on staff, they can, but it just depends on if its worth the cost and pain (w2 payroll etc).
A lot of this really depends on what you plan to do and what you want done for you. Like @Andrew Syrios said maintenance is typically an hourly rate (they might have a flat fee for really small issues to justify the trip); however, the pay for a project thing you mentioned would be a big job (typically capital improvement not repair expense) and for that you would take bids from different contractors and then try to keep them on budget while getting all the work promised actually completed and hopefully on time.
Thanks! is the maintenance tech like your full time guy who only works for you essentially and no one else? I feel like ill need hundreds of tenants before I can pay a salary haha...
You will need a maintenance tech before you get to hundreds of units, but early on, yes, you probably can't afford to have someone on staff to deal only with maintenance. So early on, using 1099 guys is probably the best way to go. It's hard to say who you should hire first, it depends on a lot of factors and what you intend to be doing. I did most of the office stuff, so it made sense that when we had enough units for someone to come on full time in maintenance, that was our first hire.