sick of greedy plumbers & electricians

Also cuteyoungchic…
We don’t charge like wounded bulls, we charge what we believe we are worth & all the other trades we work with are all doing quite well.
I have never been called back to a job as we believe do it once, do it properly & charge accordingly.
Your ok with your lawyer charging $350 per hour, but we are ripping people off by charging $150 -$250 an hour??
You justify spending $350 per hour on a lawyer because he saved you money, just shows your mentality & exactly the type of people I don’t work for….
Your job that has been waiting 12 years can keep waiting, not only myself but everyone else in the trade sector is busy enough to not worry about little jobs & when you stop being a tight arse someone will come out & do the job
Don’t say we are losing out because your too tight to spend money getting a job done, the day you do decide to get the job done is the day you decide to spend some money & the day someone like me will be making $250+ an hour to do it

Rich Sparky,
You want to do something about that anger problem of yours mate.
It's making you see things differently from the way they're portrayed!

free, thanks so much for the link to trustytradesmen.   I'm onto it!
Cheers

The only way out of your dilemma ttman, as I see it, is this. You have to tell your prop. manager you want quotes on everything before work is done. You want to know the hourly rate for the electricians, plumbers, handymen etc they hire and no account gets paid from rent and is sent to you personally.

If the rates don't suit, then you have to take control and find people who will do the job at the rate you want to pay. That may mean hunting them down next time you are in the locale of your property. It can be done, but takes a bit of effort. Get references from others and the people here on this forum may be able to help.

You might want to calm down a bit though – but I feel your anger.

I've had the same problems. $66 to change a tap washer, $132 to educate a tenant on the evaporative cooling system, $110 per hour for an electrican AND his apprentice to check a meter board. This sparky is charging out his apprentice to the tune of $30 per hour and I'm sure getting gov't assistance. Since when does a first year apprentice earn $55k per year?  (or do they). My last beef was paying a handyman $66 per hour. Thats over $100k per year for a handyman and the property manager thought this was ok.

Anyway, I now have found tradesmen that do the job for the right costs and this is at properties hundreds of kms from where I live. They are out there and a good handyman can do everything bar the elect and plumbing for $30per hr. including changing a light bulb.

Hope it works out for you.

Ian
http://theblockblog.com
Free Property Investor Information. Tools & Resources for Property Investors with a Sense of Humour.

An apprentice is charged out at $30 and you think they get $55k per year. What about the other things that need to be paid to these apprentices like super, sick pay, work cover, tool allowance, redundancy… Need I go on to open your eyes to the real world??? We are not living in a third world country where a hundyman who charges $30 per hour can support his family. <moderator: edit>

Here Here to Rich Sparky and diclem. Their words are so true!

Cheers
Wife and bookkeeper to a self employed (hardworking, smart, qualified and responsible) electrician

There's more than meets the eye when running a REC (Registered Electrical Contractor) business, providing great service and making a living.

Hang on – why isnt a handyman worth $66 an hour? Tradesmen dont get paid for every hour they work. That one hour job cost the handyman:

time on the telephone
time to figure out what needs fixing/applying
time to fetch materials
time to unpack, repack etc
time to give you an invoice/get some money off you

so that dinky one hour job actually cost the tradesman 2 hours

then factor in that they dont have one job lined up after another after another, since youre not booked 100% of the time or you were unsure about how long one job was going to take and so had to leave some injury time just to make sure you finish. And surely there should be a surcharge based on the uncertainty of future work. How are these people supposed to survive the quiet patches when work is thin?

In reality a handyman is on the tools for 4-5 hours in the day. when you factor in expenses like vehicle depreciation, vehicle wearn and tear, tires, tools, fuel, telephone, paying GST, doing relatively complicated tax returns, customers occasionally not paying you and it not being worth the hassle to go and chase $60, you end up on a pretty standard $60 000/pa job

Something else you perhaps didnt consider is that, as a handyman, you dont get to drive a nice car – your car is always full of the crap that you might need that one time, scratched and dusty as hell from the abuse you give it moving materials around. Usually, your garage/house is the same – leftover crap barely worth keeping that you just have to keep around because you know that the second you throw it away, youll need it, and have to buy more.

Further, have you considered that having one handyman capable of doing multiple tasks might just be a little bit more efficient than hiring separate tradespeople? A decent handyman can hang a door, paint a wall, change a washer etc in one hit – how much would it have set you back to get a carpenter, painter and plumber in to do the same?

20 year old shop assistants and telemarketers in this country get paid upwards of $20/hr and dont go through any of that pain, hassle, uncertainty, danger, and responsibility – and you have a problem with a handyman of 20 years varied building experience averaging $30 an hour for the time he's up and about working with the rest of the downsides?

I cant believe some of the attitudes here. A group of people wanting to own multiple houses/apartments/properties so that they can retire by age 50 or whatever and have other people give a portion of their money to them as rent so that they can coast through life after all that "hard work" investing (read: lurking forums, scanning newspapers, and meeting up with a few professionals here and there to shuffle some paper) have a problem with a bloke physically on the tools making a pretty average income, living a pretty average life, in, lets face it, unspectacular conditions. <moderator: delete>

OceanArchitectural, investing isn't "hard work" physically, although other people involved with rental properties can make life very stressful at times.
For most of us though, it's what we need to go without that makes investing such "hard work," particularly for the first couple of properties.   One also needs to be reasonably well/self educated in real estate to be successful in it. 
Most jobs are far more complicated than meet the "public" eye, a lot including all the finer detail you've included above if one works for themselves.
My work appears to others to be simple, & so I feel my time is often not respected by others.    I know otherwise, however.     But I'm lucky, because unlike this particular topic being discussed here, I don't need to crap all over everybody else if someone dents my ego, instead, I'm strong enough to simply feel sorry for the ignorant person & just continue on my way towards my goals.      

Hang on a second again – my business motto has always been to never, ever get jealous of other peoples money. If someone you hire to do a job adds value for you, they should get equivalent value back, and thats that.

Now, you said that investing isnt difficult physically – thats true. But then, a lot of handyman work isnt particularly physical either, but they take on every bit as much responsibility as an investor, albiet in smaller pieces. If youre an investor and make a mistake, sure, you can lose tens or hundreds of thousands in one hit. If youre a tradesman, all of those little losses pile up and are every bit as significant in the long term as that single major loss by an investor.

My father has been in building since forever, and I cannot count the times he took hits from such things as jobs blowing out because of something out of control – bad weather? oops, just wated 2 days and $600 in wages. Paint came off because it was a particularly hot day and ruined the external paint? oops, take it off, do it again, there goes $2000 in extra time/material/penalty fees. Apprentice crashed the van? bang, there you go, thousand dollar repair bill otherwise your premium goes up by 200%

I think that some people here are lacking in perspective. Yes investing is can be difficult, stressful, uncertain, and problematic, but the same thing applies to any person running a small business – as an investor, taking one big risk, you almost certainly end up in a better position than a tradie taking on many, mitigated, multiple risks, and so shouldnt begrudge the tradesperson on the tools who is adding value to your business (by fixing up your stuff) getting some value back out of it, equitably.

Just so you know, Ive been on tools since I was a child. The first time I finished concrete, I was 11 years old. Ive done everything through demolition, paint, tiling, masonry, render, steelwork, roofing, plastering, and cabinetry as a sole operator. These days I rezone land, design buildings, put developments together, and am into CGI specifically for off the plan developers – so I know where youre coming from, but, based on my previous experience and ability to relate to the guy who is the boots on the ground, think that your thinking is compartmentalised, unrealistic, and unfair.

Let the poor bastards make some money, they deserve it. Within reason, of course – and $66/hr is realistic. My bastard real estate agent friends drive nice cars, work in plush offices chock full of tasty things to eat/coffee machines/comfy chairs, drink wine with clients and, after the client pays for their advertising etc and they happen to find someone who was going to buy the property anyway, hit the client for $10 000 – $15 000 in fees. which, I might add, is how much a handyman could expect to make in 3 months. Its a little unfair, but then, the RE agent added value, and deserves value back. It's a better gig than being a handyman in my opinion, but as I said, added value is added value, and people should be compensated fairly in return

(Secretly I hate real estate agents. Just saying.)

yes you were, you just didnt realise that you were. your original post about a handyman not being worth $66 demonstrated that.

My overall point was to demonstrate that all business people (handymen and investors alike) take on risk and responsibility, albiet in different forms. All parties deserve fair payment for value added. For you to say that you thought that a handyman wasnt worth his $66 an hour, and yet be a property investor yourself making tens or hundreds of thousands a year when averages out over your investment life, thereby indicates that youre perfectly ok with investors being paid stupendous sums, but not okay with handymen earning a living wage.

Im not having a go at you – I appreciate that I was brought up in a building family and so know what its like on both sides of the fence (which is highly advantageous for me, because I guarantee that the price that I pay for work done is far less than what most people get charged, and tradespeople love working for me because its pain free) – I was just trying to point out that all people have the right to a fair, living wage, and that it is more useful to look at a tradesman/handymans situation wholistically, rather than look at one or two incidents where they may have been paid handsomely to do something relatively easy like changing a washer.

Believe me, if I could get work for handymen exclusively changing washers for $66 a pop all day, all night, non stop, 24/7/365, I would be sitting on a yatch right now with 5 blondes all called Svetlana, eating sushi off the naked body of a supermodel. But it isnt like that.