Maintenance Men – Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live Without Them!

A couple of weeks ago I started a discussion thread on Property Tribes about the trials and tribulations of dealing with trades in terms of property maintenance. It started out as a bit of a rant after my long-standing builder and I “had words”. Actually, he came over after sensing that I’d got my knickers in a twist about lack of visible progress on starting some roofing work before the winter and bravely sat in my kitchen whilst I launched a stiff accusation of “it’s not bloody rocket science – I just want a start date, quote and timescale. I’m not asking you to perform brain surgery and if I knew anything about roofs or wasn’t scared of scaffolding, I’d do it myself!”

The thing is, like lovers, tenants or anyone you’re not blood related to, if they say “I promise I won’t let you down” they invariably do. It’s not their fault, they know how to get you hooked with initial enthusiasm, then, as soon as they’ve secured what they wanted, they move on to bigger and better things without telling you. Innumerable unanswered phone calls and broken promises later, you realise you’ve been let down.

I always likened choosing good maintenance people to proverbially kissing frogs in the hope of finding a prince. For the record, I don’t kiss trades but am so hopelessly inadequate with any kind of maintenance work that I really could when I hear the words “Don’t worry, I know what’s wrong and I’ll fix it now” (Just don’t call me “Love”). During my five years of property investing I’ve gone through two builders, one handyman, four plumbers, two electricians and they’ve all been dumped when it became clear that they were only interested in the big jobs and strung me along when promising to fix the small ones. We had the builder who, after putting in a new bathroom, the kitchen ceiling below fell in 2 months later due to water leaks (not his fault apparently), the plumber who “forgot” to connect a radiator, the electrician who positively salivated at the installation of a fire alarm system but couldn’t be bothered to move a socket, and another plumber who promised me faithfully to sort out a leak under the sink and after several no shows, kept forgetting to answer his phone.

It kind of links me nicely to a blog I posted “That’s it! I’m going to rent”. My maintenance bill is around £15k a year and more this year due to Hurricane Irene bringing down fences in the north and a kind tenant who finally got herself a council house so felt it OK to trash my rental property.

I’m not a landlord who holds back on maintenance issues – I have a constantly changing maintenance schedule which is updated as quickly as a weekly food shopping list. I prioritise according to budget and I thank the God of the Bank of England that they’ve reduced interest rates so that I can afford to do the work, otherwise I’d be seriously strapped.

I received the following text from one of my tenants yesterday “Hi, thank you very much for resolve the problem with sink in our room. Now is much better, we have cold water too, new sink and water inside goes very quickly. Have a nice day :)”. That job cost £400 due to a blockage underneath the floorboards, new sink and taps of tenant’s choice but it’s worth it just to give my grumpy Pole hot AND cold running water.

Generous or what?!!!

Share This Article