I am a roofer, painter, dry waller, jack of all trades self employed individual.

Once they feel a sense of ownership towards their living situation (aka your property,) you may find an appropriate time to tactfully bring up the smoking and loitering in a way that doesn't point fingers or blame but rather, allows them to see the bigger picture.

You need to weigh out both to determine if this battle is worth fighting or whether to be grateful that you are buying a cash flowing property without you having to lift a finger.

Property Management companies have a pretty good finger on the pulse of the markets they operate in. 

When you said "string a line for his clothes dyer" I assumed you meant an old fashion clothes line so he can dry his clothes

And these contractors are so good the ones that have been in the industry forever they will play you like a violin like a fiddle or whatever you want to call it they're going to play you like a violin or a fiddle and the reason why is because they know the game come in give them a price that's low and then go in afterwards and find all the things that are wrong and then they're going to kill you on extras and then they're going to tell you they've got to leave your job i remember i had this guest house right guy shows up says he's going to do the drywall here's what he does to me get this okay he walks in here and he hangs all the easy stuff so any board that's uh that's that he can hang quickly he hangs it okay then he calculates the material and he finds out that you're going to be short on material does he know what he's doing here oh yeah it's like clockwork this guy knew exactly what he was doing right he walks in and he says hey listen you're gonna need more material okay so what i do because i know he's playing me like a violin right i jump in my my vehicle take my trailer go load it up with drywall get it back over to him within an hour when i got here he was wrapping up and was leaving you know that i never saw that contractor again why because he ran out the easy stuff told me i needed more material thinking that he could get away with it and then he left and went to his next job because he didn't want to do all the hard cut up stuff because that cut his wages down i looked at my contractor that was managing the job and i said are you brain dead did you see how this guy played you and he was like oh no no it's no big deal who does it end up hurting right because my contractor that's running the job says to me oh it's no big deal i'll have someone else come in and do it then the next thing that happens is he comes in and he says oh the next guy's gonna charge him more because the cut up stuff is left right and so i jumped in my car drove got that stuff turned around and came back and he was headed out the door and i said you don't need to leave anywhere you got all the material right here and he says oh it's the end of the day let me come back tomorrow right never shows up again so who gets hit with it if you're not managing your job appropriately and you're not watching exactly what's happening if you don't know all the tricks to the trade that your contractors are gonna pull on you you're gonna end up getting burned and if you get burned it's gonna be bad because they don't just get you on extras okay they'll show up to your job and then they push it off another week and then they start killing you on burn rate and all of these things combined you can have one trade just a dry waller and he can cost you two to four grand by postponing it not having the materials order right and he can cost you two to four grand in burn rate and extra cost that he's going to charge you because he didn't see what he was doing okay so these are just a few of thousands of things that these contractors do knowing they're going to get you i had another house recently you know what i did i had a contractor that did my flooring for me and i walked into the house and i said gosh i need to get these these four sanded and i need to get them finished okay i need to get them sanded and finished what happens the contractor comes in and i say listen i'll pay you two grand to do this four for me so when i say the contract i'll pay you two grand to do the floor but i need this thing done he says how long how long do you need this done and how quickly do you need this done so i go in and i say man i really need it done quickly i need it done within three days he goes that's going to be tough to do okay so this guy comes in and he sands my floor stains and finishes it in a day now this is where he gets you on the other side he just helped my burn rate at that point right but what did he do he did the the floor way too fast he did the floor way too fast you have to sand the floor and then you have to vacuum it all up if your sander doesn't do it which most of them will if you got the right equipment the other thing is is what type of equipment is he using is it old equipment that puts sawdust all over the house and now you got another cleaning bill or is it new equipment where it's actually vacuuming up that sawdust while he's sanding right so even the equipment that that contractor is using can affect how your job comes out because he's supposed to do the floors but at the end of the day it turns into a cleaning job right so this is the thing that you got to understand with contractors i got these newbies i used to tell my clients hey listen go do the renovations on your own you manage it you control that budget you'll be fine over my dead body now there's no way at the end of the day what happens is a newbie someone who's new no disrespect to anyone who's getting in the business but these contractors will frankly eat your lunch this guy came in sanded the floor stained it and put a finish coat on it in the same day and my other contractor came in and said listen he's doing those floors wrong he's got to let that floor set up he's got to stain it let it dry after it dries and he can put his first coat on after he puts his first coat on he's got to let it sit and then put a second coat on this guy i paid him a flat fee he went in got all the work done i was pressed for time had to get it furnished in stage he said it was done i hired the crew they came in to stage that property by then i'm already into the deal what happened i paid that guy good money for a double or triple coat of polyurethane or whatever the product he was using he did one coat he was out of there and he did a bad job right so this is what we see all the time is that these contractors in their respective trades know exactly how to burn you they know how to cut their time down so that they can make more money and get out and get to the next project now you would think that a contractor has a reputation for the kind of work they do you got to be extremely careful these contractors are used to playing people like a fiddle or violin all day long in fact it's gotten so bad in the industries that the contractors actually expect you to do it and if you don't they're mad at you get that they hit you with an extra that they should have seen and they're mad at you because you're the one that caused the problem that's the world we live in today it's a world where everything is always your fault and not their fault right when you deal with construction it is critical that the guys that you have it coming in are set up and they know what they're doing so let's talk about the right way to run a job number one is this is what i always tell my contractors get it in writing and make sure that they understand what you're saying because this is the other thing that happens that they're not going to tell you about or they're not going to listen that's another thing is i can tell a contractor and i don't just tell my contractors once i don't tell anyone once i tell them four five six and ten times so i'm constantly reminding them of the same thing over and over again so when it comes time for them to pull that doozy on me i can look them right in the face and say bro not on my shift okay at the end of the day i told you this this is where it is and this is how it's gonna go okay gotta remember something the way that you get a deal done is you have to know the way to leverage them so that they get where they you need them to go okay you can have them sign a contract i'll tell you this i used to have contractors sign contracts i had a 15-page contract you'll hear someone say this they'll say well give them a bonus if they finish early or hit them with a penalty if they if they take too long okay i did that for many years i'd have them write up a 15 page contract they'd sign it i'd even go to them and say this i'd say listen you tell me how long the job is going to take right constantly that i would say to i would say that to him and every contractor i known under the sun known to god and man i've seen them literally tell me every time that the job was going to be done quicker than what it was ever done okay i have rarely and this means rarely seen someone finish a job on time okay so the contractors come in they'll tell me it's gonna take three weeks i say listen i'll tell you what you said it's gonna take three weeks i'll add another week on to it so i add another week on to their deal and i basically say to them i'll give you four weeks and i'll give you bonuses if you fin a bonus if you finish early every day early i'll bonus you because i know my burn rate's hitting me right so my burn rate is at uh a hundred dollars a day i can bonus 50 and still be ahead right if i looked at it that way but i can give them a bonus if i give them a bonus of fifty dollars a day i'm still ahead right your burn rate could be a hundred dollars a day and if you're if you're bonusing them fifty dollars then that's you're you're winning at that point right you're winning at that point okay but the fact of the matter is is these contractors are going to give you short time you can add a week and you can give them bonuses and penalties doesn't work okay let me tell you what does work and this is where the battle really comes because these contractors are so good that they know exactly what it is that to leverage you and to keep you on the downside in them on the hub side upside now don't get me wrong there's been contractors that haven't burned and so what they've learned is is they need to stay ahead of you whether you stand ahead of them there's a battle that goes on a job site between you and the contractor because at the end of the day they're going to do everything they can to get everything the way they want it and you have to basically be on a chess board with that battle doing everything you can to get what you want okay so let's talk about that a little bit number one is the more money you give them up front the worse leverage you have okay where your leverage position changes in a job is based on the money you pay them and a contractor will always try to get as much money as they can up front here's how i do it if i'm a contractor and i have a reputation i walk in and i hand you a bit and i say listen this job's going to cost you five thousand dollars it's gonna take a week to get it done and i need my check for five grand at the end when you're done okay i'm gonna have you pay for the materials because what i don't want to do as a contractor is i don't want to get into materials and then you not pay me because then you're going to burn me from my material my labor okay so a lot of contractors know this all too well it depends on the state in texas you've got to have them paid for materials and as an example in north carolina you can buy the materials and there are legal reasons why you have them buy the materials and if they're going to buy the materials then you go to the store with them you purchase the materials and you make sure they get back to your job that's another thing to keep in mind by the way and my site if they're running right what you do is you set up a wireless camera in the garage and you set up a material staging area and the material staging area what you do is you bring all your materials into the garage the the cameras right there monitoring 24 7 we can track that material in and out as they use it because it's really easy for someone to pull up a van and over order the materials and tell you it's going to cost this when they know it's going to be less and pull up the van and take 10 boxes of flooring and throw it inside their van and down the road and you didn't even know that flooring was gone or missing right and that's if you're paying for the materials and you're just giving them labor now if they've got it figured in theirs then there's a there's that's not going to be an issue right but at the end of the day what we set up is a material staging area with a camera on it and when the material is delivered it's dropped that place and then when it's dropped to that place we have 24/7 camera monitoring.

If they agree to do a double dry close great, you don’t need to bring any money.

It dries perfectly level.

We should be dried in before Christmas.

It's a pretty tight timeline, but the good thing is we have an agent who've worked with before, so we've stared to make offers since last week (finger crossed that we get some offers accepted soon).