Hiring a Builder You Can Trust
Your builders either make or break your project….However it is your responsibility to be on top of your builders. This means visiting your property projects numerous times unexpected during the week. We have been working with some of our builders for years…yet sometimes there can be issues. We check room sizes for both our Professional HMOs and Social HMOs….we go around with a damp meter among other issues. We work as a team and they are reliable…however we are constantly monitoring.
The key to running a successful property business includes having a team of reliable, contracted professionals to keep your rental property in tiptop shape. With our professional HMOs we have this…the beauty of the social housing is that maintenance is covered up to 5,000 per year. This saves us a tremendous amount of time and energy. In addition, you are going to want your Rolodex of contractors to be experts in their field, be affordable, and be timely. This is what your tenants of your Professional HMOs expect from contractors making repairs on the rental they lease from you; therefore, you should expect the same. And this is especially true because many times the cost to make repairs of your Professional HMOs, perform maintenance tasks, or add improvements to your rental is going to be coming straight out of your pocket.
Trust is built over time…as well as by overcoming issues. I can tell you hands down we have daily issues to deal with. My colleague went away for his anniversary yesterday for 2 days. I was not able to move from my desk handling issues. We had snagging issues on 2 sets of social housing HMOs there were resolved, yet there was a post inspection and now wanted additional items and more fire signs. OK, this is all part of it. We had one property in which we had to extend and finalize the building regs. We had only requested since last Thursday the final certificates. Our Social Housing corp client had been on us to get them…and the gent at the inspection company left work last Thursday. His replacement was not available and had to chase down a superior to sign off. All the while we have a buyer as well waiting to purchase this social HMO.
This is what I love about people who think they just give it to a sourcer and abra ca dabra…all issues will be handled magically. ( Maybe a course too many of not reality in property).
Getting back to how to trust your builders that you are looking to hire…
1 word…Get references and start slow. See how they will handle problems as they come up. I promise you they will….See if they warranty their works afterwards. It is like a marriage, it is all about building a relationship. You do not marry everyone you date. You try…you see how they preform…you see their integrity.
Will give a great example of one of the builders on our team. My wife in inadvertently over paid an invoice. This lovely gent called with his typical sense of humor asking if we liked him. I had to respond…We love you…Next question. How much do you love me? Do you love me enough to pay double?
Basically this gent had so much integrity and honesty to point out our error. This is what you want to surround yourself with. More so, we pay all of our builders immediately upon inspection & completion of works. This makes them loyal to us. Property is a long term game. Not a get rich quick. It is more of a grind it out
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