How much do you pay Handymen, workers, day laborers etc?

[Will F.]

Hi everyone we have several rentals in the Los Angeles area. For tenant turnover we often have to do basic cleaning, flooring, paint, caulk etc.

For this we go with the cheapest labor possible. I found a "handyman" worker who speaks only broken English, but enough to understand 80% of what we talk about.

So the pros are that he's generally cheaper than a contractor. I trust him for the most part. But the cons are there's a communication problem as far as English and that his prices are becoming more expensive for what his actual skills are.

Anyways I was wondering how much you generally pay for someone like this and how you pay them (per job/per hour)

I feel that in the beginning he charged very little for his services, but lately he has been increasing prices.

For instance, for a one bed one bath apartment (650 sq ft apx) with large kitchen he charged $1660 for basic cleaning and paint. I happened to be out of town for this so I just had him collect the keys so we had not agreed upon a price. For this he used a double coat of Behr Ultra Paint/primer, and had to deal with a lot of oils from the kitchen, but I still don't understand how it could be this expensive. He also claimed it took 6 days with 2 people.

We argued over this price because I have had apartment paint specialists (found through apartment associations) paint a similar apartment with basic cleaning for about $500. These people come in over 1-2 days and just spray everything with cheap paint but it will still come out looking good overall.

So how do you all set up basic systems for paying handymen? Do you pay per hour? I could see them taking their time if paid hourly. How do you set up incentives for them to do things more quickly? Or any negotiating tips would be helpful.