Lesson Learned

[Rob L.]

I had a funny yet expensive lesson I learned a couple weeks back. Hopefully others might be able to learn at my expense.

So we closed on a 3 family that was a short sale in Feb. 2 units were rented and the 3rd was vacant. It needed about 5K of work to get it back to par. Everything was pretty much done and as I was doing the final walk through I thought a nice fresh coat of paint in the unit would be a good finishing touch.

Now, I value my time so by no means was I going to paint it myself, especially on a weekend. So I made mistake # 1 and hired a friend of the family because they needed work and we could get the work done the next day. The best part was I was told they would do the work for cheap. Normally, I would get a professional but for such a small job and short notice I figured why not help out?

I use all the same paint for our units so I had the paint, brushes and equipment they needed. The next day the two friends of the family came over and painted the unit. They finished in about 5 hours and my wife even bought them lunch since she stopped by to show the units to potential tenants.

Now comes mistake # 2, not talking money upfront. So not only did I use non licensed, un-insured people but I heard it would be cheap, so I didn't talk money at all.

At the end of the day my wife asked what we owed them and it came to $500 dollars.....

That's 50 dollars an hour per person. I value my time but I could be persuaded to paint and get a free meal for $50 an hour.

My wife was in such shock she wrote them the check...Once I found out I was obviously a little upset and called and we talked through it. But, I learned a couple great lessons and will certainly not make that mistake again.

What other mistakes have people made like this that we might be able to learn from?