How to hire and pay a handyman

[Don Chambers]

I have a manager that works for me for a small base salary and a percentage of rents and flip profits. The pay structure aligns their incentives with mine. This year I would like to hire a handyman to reduce and stabilize costs. I have been using contractors and usually have them to include materials so I don't have a good breakdown on labor costs.

I have 66 rentals and do 2 or 3 flips a year. I want to hire a handyman to do maintenance calls and get houses ready between tenants. I can't figure out how to pay the handyman. I want to reduce costs, pay them fairly, and try to align their incentives with mine.

Some days (or weeks) there will be little or nothing to do. Some weeks we will be swamped. Sometimes I get another rental and it has to be renovated. Sometimes I have a flip going. I dont mind bringing in contractors to augment the handyman for special projects.

If i just pay by the job I might as well use contractors like I've been doing. I don't want to pay hourly where I end up paying them to sit on a bucket all day. I want to provide a stable salary, not give them busy work when there is no work, and expect them to help when we are swamped since sometimes they get paid for nothing.

I've done pretty good aligning my managers incentives with mine. I want to crack the handyman issue this year.

Any ideas?