All Forum Posts by: Gustavus Adolphus

Thanks for the comments. I have asked for feedback when they flake. The only one who gave a meaningful answer just cited minor stuff in the apartment (like not liking the color of the tub, etc.). She said she thought the rent was fair.

Maybe I have just been luckier in the past in finding tenants quickly than I realized. It helps to hear this is a common issue.

I have several multi-family rentals. I haven't had trouble finding tenants in the past, but I'm trying to fill multiple vacancies this summer and keep running into this issue: Prospective tenants express a great deal of interest during showings and tell me they want to sign a lease as soon as possible. But when I send them my application (which I send by email) they say they need to think about it some more, and then never contact me again. Or they've decided to go with another place. Or whatever.

The bottom line is they flake, despite having seemed very interested during the initial showing.

In some cases this has happened after I have agreed to do second showings for seemingly interested prospects, usually so they could bring more family members along etc. The double showings suck up more of my time, and make it extra annoying when they flake.

Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong? Would it be better to have the prospects fill out paper applications on the spot if they are interested, before their minds wander elsewhere?

I also wonder if my problem has been that I've been advertising and showing my units 3-4 weeks before they are available for move-in. Renters looking for a new place 3-4 weeks out, as opposed to next weekend, might be more inclined to keep browsing because there is less pressure. But that hasn't been a problem for me in the past.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts. This is a new issue (I've run into this behavior occasionally in the past, but lately it seems to be happening with every other showing) and it is perplexing me.

@Account Closed that's a great idea that could potentially work here. Thanks.

Thanks for your reply. I'm looking for suggestions about which types of tenants I might target, beyond a typical family, for this situation. Maybe there is not a better answer than what you've already given.

I bought a two-family house. Each unit has four large bedrooms, plus dining room, parlor room, etc., and is over 2000 square feet (per unit -- the house is 4000+ total). The units are well maintained and have lots of amenities. Given the condition and size, these are top-tier rentals for my area.

My plan is to rent the house out indefinitely, and I'm wondering what the best strategy is. I worry that it will be hard to find good tenants because most families that need that much space either 1) already own a house, 2) can't afford such a large apartment or 3) can afford an apartment that large short term, but long term will end up inviting their extended family, etc. to live with them because they have so much space and can't make rent on their own.

The only good potential type of tenant I can think of is a middle-class family that needs non-permanent housing -- e.g., professionals who are in the area for a year for work and want a large space to rent for that period. But the market for those folks is small in my area, plus this would involve a lot of tenant turnover.

Another thought, of course, is to divide the house up into more units. But that would require cash and I'd prefer not to invest any more in this property.

@Brian Pulaski other examples include having the soffit repaired (it had a number of boards bowing or falling off because of water damage from the previously leaking roof) and the guy claiming he had to replace more boards than he expected. But he was never specific about how many boards he'd replace in the first place, and he ended up with a lot of extra wood on site when the job was done. So I felt like he was just telling me whatever he wanted to get to the price he wanted. Another example: A guy who painted my house and told me halfway through the job that he was going to raise the price because some of the trim on my house had to be replaced and it was too intricate for him to do himself, so he had to bring in a carpenter. (That contract had included replacement of all rotting wood as part of the paint job, but apparently when the guy was in the middle of the job he decided his carpentry skills weren't good enough to do some the complicated cuts.)

In both cases my contracts were rather unspecific, and that was clearly my mistake. The idea of having costs for specific types of unforeseen circumstances specified in the contract is a good one (of course, it's impossible to include everything that could happen).

That said, as I've mentioned, what makes upcharges feel really unfair is that unless they are covered in a specific way by the contract, you're at the contractor's mercy as to the price of extra work, unless you want to tell them not to do the extra work at all. In the case of my painter, for example, the carpenter he brought in charged me an extra $1000 to replace the wood. I had no idea whether that was a fair price, because I wasn't in a position to get quotes from other carpenters. And I wasn't going to tell the painter to paint the house without replacing all of the rotting wood (which, again, was part of the original contract), because then I would have ended up with a defective job. I guess I could have told him I would hire my own carpenter instead of the guy he wanted to bring in, but that would have made the relationship with the painter kind of awkward. Maybe that's just what you have to do.

In any case, I'm learning that I 1) need to be more specific with contracts and 2) need to stop worrying about being nice to contractors. I appreciate all of the responses.

I understand that argument to a point, but I'd note that:

1) When you quote for the job, you should do everything you can to anticipate what issues you might encounter. In some of the jobs I have had done, I strongly suspect the guys have known there were likely to be extra problems (like rotted joists) but they did not quote for them or mention them ahead of time -- or really get up on the roof and try to look for them. They just want to get their quote done. Sure, you can't see every problem before opening up the roof, but you have a certain ability to inspect it and try to foresee what you're working with before the job is underway.

2) There is always going to be some degree of variability in your work. For instance, I assume you don't know exactly how many nails you are going to use before you start the job. I also assume (or hope) that you don't upcharge if you turn out to use a few more nails than you expected. And yes, maybe you end up making an extra run to the lumberyard that you didn't anticipate. Needing extra materials is a common problem that should be counted as part of the job. Unless there is a substantial amount of extra work or materials required, adding to the cost of the job doesn't seem fair.

I happen to do a lot of contract work myself (as a writer, not in construction), and I know that when I take a job for a fixed price, the amount of time and effort I will end up spending on it is not entirely predictable. But if a client wants more revision than usual, or the piece ends up requiring a few hundred more words than I expected, I don't go and upcharge the client. I'd only renegotiate the price if there were substantially more work required once the project is underway (like, if the client doubles the length of what they want written). Otherwise, I'd feel like I was taking advantage of the client because they are not in a good position to say no, or compare prices for the extra work, once I am in the middle of their project. And if I did try to upcharge for small amounts of extra work, I'd probably not get hired by that client again, which would hurt me in the long run.

You can't reasonably expect to be compensated for every tiny amount of extra effort you put into something. It's just a bad business.

I'm a reluctant real estate investor (I bought a rental property next to my house not because I want to be a landlord, but the previous owner agreed to sell for a low, low price, and I wanted to control the house next to mine, which was in rough shape and had some shady tenants). So I'm new to the game.

My issue is working with contractors. So far, it seems like almost every guy I've hired to do work on this house (which, again, has needed a lot of work -- from driveway repair to siding to roofing and more) upcharges as part of their pricing strategy. They'll quote a price for the job, sign a contract with me and then inevitably find all sorts of previously "unnoticed" problems once they begin working.

I get that there is always a certain amount of uncertainty regarding what you're going to find when you start opening up walls, etc., and that contractors need to be paid for significant amounts of extra labor or materials that go into a job. But the problem is that 1) the contractors seem to upcharge the job even for relatively minor extra work (like having to sister a few joists -- which takes maybe half an hour and $20 worth of material) and 2) it feels like I get gouged on pricing for all of the upcharged work. Once the contractors have half of the roof torn off and discover supposedly new issues that they did not know about when they gave me the original quote, I'm not in a good position to say no to the extra work. Nor do I have a realistic chance to shop around and see what other guys would charge to do that work. As a result, they get to charge basically whatever they want for the extra work. 

Any thoughts on dealing with this? I know vetting your contractor is part of the process, but I try, and it only seems to go so far. I get multiple bids for every job, I don't always hire the cheapest guy and I stay away from people who clearly underbid. In fact, I've tried to err toward people who give higher quotes, in the hope that there will be fewer surprises once the work is underway. But they all seem to take advantage of the situation once they are in the middle of the job.

Is this a problem with all contractors? Should I basically just factor in an extra 10-20% on every quote I get? Or is there a secret trick for finding guys who will avoid upcharging unless there is really a reasonable need for it (and in that case, give me a fair price for the extra work).

Thanks all for the responses. This is helpful perspective indeed.

Another part of the backstory here is that it seemed like there might be something a little off with Contractor B in some ways. For example, the name of his company on his business card was different than the name of the company he used on the contract. He told me he had just changed the company's name, but that didn't give me a great feeling. That was part of the reason I leaned toward Contractor A.

Based on your responses, and the mild sense of sketchiness that I got about Contractor B, I am thinking that maybe he is just an unprofessional guy. After gaining perspective here, I think that maybe I wasn't as totally nice in working with these contractors as I would have been if I were a perfect person. But I can't think of anything I did that warranted being called untrustworthy and immoral.

I made a contractor very upset by not accepting his bid and am trying to figure out if I broke some important etiquette rules of dealing with contractors.

The story is this: I got two estimates from painting contractors for exterior painting of a large house. Company A's bid was for $9500. Company B's was $8800. I asked Company B to come down to $8000, which they agreed to do. I then told Company A that Company B had lowered its price to $8000, and asked if they would match it. Company A agreed to do so. I had a slightly better feeling about Company A, and since the price after negotiations was the same, I ended up going with them.

I wrote to Company B politely to say I really appreciated the time they had taken to give me the estimate, but had decided to go with another option. I got a nasty message back saying I was untrustworthy and of low morals.

I got the sense that Company B didn't like that I backed out after they had agreed to come down in price. I worry that they thought that, when I asked them to lower the price, I was implying that I would accept their bid as long as they agreed to the new price, rather than going and asking their competitor to match the new, lower price before making a final decision.

Company B also spent a long time discussing details of the job over email with me over the course of a week or so. I think part of the offense they took may also have been from the fact that they had invested a fair bit of time in working with me, and I had then turned around and not hired them after seeming to be very interested (which I genuinely was -- but I also wanted to make sure I was getting the very best balance between price and quality that I could).

I don't have a lot of experience dealing with contractors, so I'm honestly wondering if I committed a big faux pas, or if Company B is just unprofessional. When I ask a contractor to lower their price and they agree, is it nasty of me not to end up working with them?

Just looking for some perspective on the issue.  In the future, I want to avoid burning bridges with contractors who give me estimates, since even if I don't want to work with them on a particular job, I may be interested in hiring them for different work at a later time.