Looking for advice on managing key resources between Rehabs

[Tony Karns]

I am getting ready to start investing, but I will not be doing the work myself as this investment will be out of state. I got a few questions and would like to understand how others are doing it.

I will be moving to TX , but would like to invest in FL. Do I need a Project Manager? 

Since I am not sure how many flips or rehabs, I will be doing a month; What is the best way to address compensation with the project manager.

While a general contractor is paid by the job, some are very busy and it could be months till they are available, How do you keep a good GC when you are in between deals?

[Alec B Calzada]

@Tony Karns

We work with GCs in California all of the time. A good GC is a good GC, but they aren't the only people capable of doing good work at a fair price. Since you're just getting started, I'd recommend not trying to solve this problem right now. Rather, put together a roster of GCs who you CAN work with and start to send your first couple of projects to the preferred GC. If things get slow in between jobs and they take other work, go down the list and get the next best contractor to do your newest project. Your goal should be to maintain your momentum and keep scaling up. Once you've passed the break (to using a sailing term) then your preferred GC won't begrudge you having used some other guys in the past to get to that point since you'll be supplying him with a steady stream of projects.

Hiring a Project Manager to take care of things for you seems like an expensive option and you have the same issue with them as well, what are you paying them for or how are they making money if you have a lull between jobs? You can pay them per project, but to make a living and dedicate their time to you, it's going to need to be worth their while. Once you have consistent projects coming in and being done, you wouldn't need the project manager so much anymore since you'd have trusted GC(s) to do the project management for you, right? I'd refer to anyone else who's actually worked through a PM on it, but to me that seems like a costly route that's going to hold back your scaling even more. 

P.S. - One thing you can do is give your preferred contractor an unofficial first-right-of-refusal, so they hear from you and get a chance to try and bid on every project you get in, keeping them in the loop on what's coming in and letting them know that you really want to work with them. That may give them incentive to be more patient between deals or even take on additional crew members to make sure they can capture the work.