I’m curious what people’s experiences are with using the agents tradies? Are they any good and are they generally more expensive? I had a bad experience a couple of times a few years ago and since then I generally tend to find my own. But it takes a lot of my time as the agent doesn’t arrange the appointment so I become the middle man and the agent becomes the other middle man which slooooows everything down especially if the agent is unresponsive.
Why are you arranging appointments between tradies and tenants? Agents shouldn't arrange these appointments either. The owner and agent don't know when tradies and tenants are available, so the tradies and tenants should arrange mutually convenient appointments directly between themselves.
When finding your own tradies, I have heard it's best not to organise a job with tradies yourself, but to pass on tradies details to your agent for them to call and make the appointment themselves. I think it was because if something goes wrong with the way the job was arranged properly, you can hold the agent liable. I don't know if this is true or not?
There are always exceptions, but trust me - Property Mangers only want to use the best and most trustworthy tradies. We churn & burn through the bad ones to get to the good ones.
As an investor, over the years I've decided its not worth the stress, time and effort not to go with the PM's tradies. As a PM, I work really hard to have good, reliable and efficient tradies - sometimes they are not the cheapest (although not far off) but they are worth it in attitude and care factor.
A one man band type tradie will likely be cheaper than a tradie who has a few people in a few vans running around. The former is usable by youself if you're doing your own renovation or just a once off job but is unusable for an agency as they cant get to all the jobs quick enough, invoice them all correctly, nor have someone in an office to talk to about jobs / errors / bills / warranty.
Agent reluctant to give me tenants number to give to tradie. Waste my time and makes me so frustrated having to arrange and cancel because the time isn’t suitable and then waiting for days before the agent gets back to me with a response. Agent blames it on the tenant being unresponsive but I’m taking that with a grain of salt. If I was a tenant and want something fix as urgently as she claims, I would be returning calls. I also know that I can get this information from the lease agreement but I didn’t want to **** the agent off by doing that when she clearly doesn’t want me knowing.
If every PM shares your attitude I’ll be more than happy to go with it even if it wasn’t the cheapest. Unfortunately I’ve had a bad experience so have left a bad aftertaste. My agent isn’t the most proactive either, sometimes just sits on the issue for days until I ask for an update. Annoys the hell out of me, i am thinking of switching.
I find that some PMs (not my PM, just when I have rented) will engage tradies for what a handyman could have done at twice the price and also charge for works that the previous tennant/owner needed to pay for.
I work for a handful of property managers. Its not like out of nowhere they start sending you dozens of work orders. They get all the insurance and licensing first and then you become the backup/overflow of there first choice. At the start you get a lot of "quote only" orders or "can you beat this price". After a while they increase your orders and just call and ask for a rough price instead of actual quotes. I've never been asked for kickbacks or any dodgy deals.
Also if I use the agents tradies, can I ask them to get me several quotes or is it just the one quote. I would imagine they have several tradies on hand that can do the same thing. Or is that asking them to go above and beyond their role?
Of course you can ask your agent to get a couple of free quotes for you to compare the prices. It's definitely part of their role, you are paying them to do their job to manage your property.
It's a hard question to answer- some agents work a lot harder than others to get you great work at great prices. Some don't make the effort, other are inexperienced and don't know how to do a good job, and very few make money from maintenance at your expense. I think you have to consider it case by case, whether they instill confidence in you or not. You also need to consider if your standards are reasonable, but 99% of Landlords are, so that's probably not the issue.
For me it depends on the job. I use my own plumber and handyman as I've known them for years and they do a great job at good rates (my PM liaises with them to organise repairs and maintenance). Electrical I use the PMs as they are very good. Other trades, depending on the scope, I usually get three quotes myself (again, the PM organises the contact with tenants).