How to know a real Hanyman verses a poser

[Joe S.]

So let’s say you place a gig offering on     Facebook, or some other site looking for someone to do a make ready on a rental. Before the day is over you’re going to be overwhelmed with people saying they can do the job and they have tons of experience. How have some of you sorted through the posers to find the gem?

[Jim K.]

Originally posted by @Bruce Woodruff:

@Jim K. is spot-on. The main reason there are fewer tradespeople is that the new generations are not interested in that sort of work. You go a jobsite nowadays and look at the ages of the people working....the average age is now 40s, where it used to be 20s or 30s.

I'd say it's easier to find a good contractor than a good handyman. There is a market that needs an influx of qualified people, most college kids ought to drop out and learn some trade skills... they'd make far more being a handyman in a lot of cases.

I am constantly amazed by how well our school system has managed to brainwash our kids into the belief that there's no money in the trades, or rather that working in an office is the way to go for everyone. If I had an office opening that I was paying $15/hr for as a starting salary, I would advertise it and get twenty resumes from college grads emailed to me within a day, all with nice little objective lines stating, "I am a motivated self-starter..."

Instead, I have on-and-off apprentice handyman, basic real estate education, basic financial education, driver opportunities available. Paying $15/hr starting salary, no experience necessary, I do all the training, just pass Jimbo the tools and listen to him blather on. It's INCREDIBLY hard finding motivated, smart young people who can see the possibilities. There are a few, don't get me wrong. Hope he doesn't get upset for mentioning it, but there ARE people like @Steven Ko, who actually moved here to the Burgh to get started. Yet once you start talking about getting a handle on your debt, getting a job, and steadily working at improving your credit rating for a few years, there's perhaps one Steven who buckles down and does the ugly to a hundred Bozos who shrug and disappear.

I'm not saying college is a scam. I went to college. Did very good at it, didn't have to pay much for it. College gave me a lot of skills that have helped me understand a lot about this business, most notably the critical thinking skills that helped me analyze how the many simplistic, seductive lies about how to successfully get into real estate are constructed and sold. But a ridiculous number of the other people I went to college with are currently working high-paying jobs, living in bananas-expensive houses, driving cars that are bankrupting them. This just becomes more and more obvious as I get older (46 right now).

I recently got back in touch with someone I went to high school with. He did everything right, went after the right computer science degree, studied hard, got "a good job" in tech, tucked money right from the start into his 401K. And now he lives in a lovely $1.2M home in Waltham, MA with three kids and a wife and retirement savings + equity in the home totaling $600K against maybe $700K in debt on his overpriced house and multiple late-model cars. You ask him about his situation, he'll tell you loudly and proudly that he's been very fortunate and in seven more years he'll burn the mortgage and own his own posh-neighborhood house outright at 53 and be very happy.

I can't talk to my old friend without thinking repetitively, "Oh, you poor broke bastard, you poor broke bastard..."

I've got at least five more examples of the same middle-class-minded, good-job, house-poor, life-wasting financial stupidity at my fingertips in my circle of pre-real-estate friends and of course my family.