Maintenance?

[tmortimer]

Hey everybody!



I am reading through Don Campbell's book "Real Estate Investing in Canada", and I have a quick question:



What if I don't want to fix toilets?? If I purchase, say, 6 rental houses, how can I set it up so that I don't have to run around with a maintenance van taking apart toilets and fixing walls?



Obviously, I'm very very new. haha!





Thank in advance!

 

[invst4profit]

You have two choices either find a local handyman contractor to call when work needs to be done or pay a property manager to call his local handyman contractor.



You need local trades people in this business and they are more than willing to maintain ongoing relationships with landlords so my advice is start going through the yellow pages and make contacts.

 

[housingrental]

I second Greg's post

I'd like to also add check with your local property management association for references

 

[tmortimer]

Out of those two options, which would you prefer?

 

[MurrayWood]

Do both. Things always change and it will make you better at being a

professional real estate investor. Put in the work so it gets easier later.

 

[invst4profit]

If I chose to no longer do the work myself I would begin hiring contractors directly to do the work for me. Then if I chose to grow larger I could move on to hiring a PM.

I would however highly recommend doing as much work as possible yourself when starting out. It's difficult to manage contractors or PMs with enough confidence to not feel you are being screwed if you have no hands on experience to gauge by.



Obviously you do not need to have been a doctor in order to hire a doctor but this is not brain surgery and no body dies when something is not done right. You will however open yourself up to losing a lot of money to unscrupulous contractors and PMs.