It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find good handymen. Just watch the episode of South Park called “Panderville” where the few good handymen available are charging high rates to the highest bidder for their time and are millionaires because few people can fix these days.
I learned some painful lessons recently that cost me losses including dozens of hours of my time, stress, upset tenants, and $12,000. All it took was 3 wrong hires from craigslist. I’ll summarize the examples of the losses, red flags to look for when hiring, and recommendations for hiring a good handyman.
Craigslist plumber flooded my house
I recently engaged a new handyman and things were off to a good start. One of our rentals needed a new water heater, which is always urgent as the tenant doesn’t have any hot water. The handyman needed a couple days to get to the job, and once there and after removing the inoperable water heater, he decided to have a career change and didn’t want to be a handyman anymore. He notified me via text and left the jobsite. The water to the entire home was shut off, the old water heater was still installed, and new water heater was sitting there in a box. Of course this was on a Friday afternoon so getting anybody out there to complete the work in the evening or on the weekend would be double rate. Hiring a professional to install a water heater during off hours would be $2,500 – $2,600 total including the cost of the water heater. It was the third water heater that needed replacement in 3 weeks time amongst our rentals and I couldn’t possibly keep spending that much money on these.
Given this situation, what did I do? I went to craigslist and I hired the first person that responded to my ad. He responded within 5 minutes and with 3 years of experience he’d install the new water heater, which cost $600 from Home Depot, for $200 labor. What a deal! He went to do the jobsite same day and started work. I told him that I wouldn’t be available from 5:30 until 7pm because I coach my daughter’s sports team. While I was leading an infield practice he called 3 times in a short timeframe, so I took his call while everybody stopped and waited. He wanted me to prepay $2 worth of copper fittings on home depot’s website so he could complete the job because he wasn’t willing to front the $2. I told him I couldn’t do it right then, so he stopped work. By the time I got home and spent another 15 minutes on it, he went to home depot and they’d closed for the day. My tenant was very disappointed. The next day he never showed up, and then on Sunday he returned to the jobsite. While I was at Church he started calling again, and asked me where the main water shutoff was to the townhome, and I didn’t know. Shouldn’t he know how to figure it out?? In any case, he cut the 3/4″ copper pipe and water started gushing out at full pressure into the house. Both he and the tenant were frantically calling me again for a solution, making it my problem once again. All three of us started calling plumbers and the fire department, and since it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, nobody would answer, until I found one plumber that did. They came out an hour later and completed the job for $1,400 emergency labor. Surprisingly, the tenant found the right water valve to turn off after about 10 minutes of water gushing into her home, not the craigslist plumber.
The professional plumber that arrived later trained the craigslist plumber on how to do the job and even paid him $100 cash. The craigslist plumber apparently “didn’t know the difference between a gas valve and water valve and shouldn’t have been anywhere near a water heater”. Would you believe, the craigslist plumber started calling me every five minutes that evening and demanded to be paid and blamed me because I said the water to the house had been turned off when it wasn’t. The tenant confirmed it was b/c she didn’t have water in any faucet for two days, so he accidentally turned it on at some point. How could I possibly pay somebody for this debacle? For the next two days I received two dozen phone calls, text messages, emails, and voice mails of threats of him going back to the house, breaking in and tearing out the new water heater until finally it stopped. There was water damage to the ceiling where the hundreds of gallons of water spilled, and the tenant spent two hours mopping and cleaning. I brought dehumidifiers and fans and left them running for two weeks, then ultimately had ceiling repair done because of the discoloration. The tenant demanded to be compensated for her trouble, and rightfully so. In all total the mistake of hiring a craigslist plumber cost at least 15 hours of additional time on my part, and $5,000.
Craigslist Handyman #1
I had a large backlog of maintenance needs due to not having a good handyman for months, and this guy I found was very motivated. I quickly found out the reason why – he was completely broke. On the first job I gave him, a familiar request was made of me to purchase the materials of $40 because he had no money to do so, so I did. After a couple hours he was finished and then started calling and texting non stop for the next hour until I could get back to him. He needed to be paid immediately so he could put gas in his vehicle to go to the next jobsite. Without any time to inspect his work, I paid him. I requested that in the long run I pay him once per week, and that he provide me with an invoice and a few photos of his completed work. On a few occasions in the following weeks, I spent a couple hours of my time helping him form an invoice and write down what he did and how long it took, and often times he knew he worked four hours but couldn’t remember what he did. He couldn’t even produce receipts for the materials that I continually had to front the money for. Often times one or two days after I’d pay him, he’d make another request for an advance on payment. On one occasion he was at the car repair shop and couldn’t get his car back until he paid them, so he called and texted non stop once again and needed money immediately. His problem became my problem and this was a recurring issue that required many hours of my time. Rarely did we talk during normal business hours; like clockwork he’d call after 7pm at night and on Sundays when I was taking a break from work.
After about six weeks of time and half a dozen jobs, patterns evolved
- He wouldn’t show up to do work when he said he would. This generated phone calls to me from tenants that were expecting him, and then he wouldn’t answer my calls either.
- He would say a job is done and request immediate payment, and then I’d find out later it was only half done. He could not check off a list and complete all tasks; every job he finished had straggling items that I had to keep track of and find another way for them to get completed.
- Every job he completed included low quality work, or his work caused other problems. On one job, instead of replacing old and yellowed mini blinds, he spray painted them white and was happy to report he saved me money. Only later did I hear from the tenant the overspray (pictured) from his painting also painted their furniture. All that to avoid spending $10 on new mini blinds.
- He’d go to the store shopping way more often than necessary. On one job he made 8 transactions at various stores for supplies before even starting the work, and billed 9 hours for it and couldn’t remember details of that time spent, but blamed other people for it.
- Multiple tenants issued complaints about him swearing at their home, and they didn’t feel comfortable being around him because he looked like a drug abuser.
- He would cut corners to save a few dollars and felt good about notifying me of that, but later the cut corners would end up costing me more money.
- He wouldn’t follow the instructions on how to do something properly, and he’d still do outdoor work that shouldn’t have been done due to low temperatures, but because he needed money so bad he did it anyway. The work later failed and it was money lost.
In one rental during a turnover I wanted a third bedroom added in the basement. The task was to build a wall with a door, and a closet. There was two weeks of time available, which was plenty of time to complete the work. The first week he didn’t show up, and then brought friends to help him during the second week. He kept telling me it would be finished on time, but with two days left before the tenant moved in, expecting a 3 bedroom home instead of 2, it was obvious the room would not be finished. He spoke highly of his friends helping him that one is an expert framer and the other is an expert drywall guy. The door frame created was not even close to square, so a door could not be properly installed, and the drywall looked like a 10 year old did it. The tenants are very unhappy about the situation as was I. After losing too much money on his work and infuriating too many tenants including myself, I removed him from the job mid project and quit working with him completely.
Craigslist Handyman #2
With a half finished bedroom and the need to get it completed as quickly as possible, I was again on the hunt to find somebody to finish it. I received a quote from a professional company with a crew at $3,800, which seemed pretty high as all that was left was to correct the existing drywall, paint, and put in a door and closet door. With good timing, one of the Craigslist handymen I contacted weeks prior reached out and asked if I had any work available. He said he was capable of doing everything I needed, and was very opinionated about how terrible the drywall work was that had been done. He said he’d finish the room for $1,000 and could start immediately. How could I say no?
Red flag #1 – he needed $20 up front for gas to get to the job site. While this is an obvious red flag, I played along and knew he’d be one that needed to be paid daily, but it would be for only one week so whatever. I also once again spent time fronting $40 at a time so he could buy materials.
I met his Craigslist handyman at the home a couple days later and felt a bit uncomfortable about his appearance and demeanor; he was covered in tattoos and would use foul language constantly. When I returned home I looked up his name on the state courts website for any court cases he was involved in. The list was 44 items in length, including one from just last week! He’d be convicted of just about everything you could think of – multiple DWI’s, using counterfeit money, drug possession, four housing evictions, and endless list of traffic violations, two outstanding warrants, burglary, robbery, domestic abuse, etc. I went into damage control mode from there with the goal of keeping him happy and on good terms.
Instead of him working one week, the job took 3 weeks as often he’d work just two hours per day or not at all. Like the last handyman, he brought a friend to help him speed up the work as I gave him a deadline of “Friday” in the third week. On that Friday he said it was “done” and requested another payment, even though I just paid him yesterday. I quickly paid him and we parted ways to keep him happy. The next day I went to view the work and couldn’t believe my eyes – see pics on the right. The best one was the baseboard that was installed backwards so the barcode faced outward.
Like the last handyman, this one also forgot some tools and needed to return to the home, which I approved. In addition to grabbing his tools, and also grabbed the tenant’s coin jar that contained about $100 in coins and stole it.
The tenants were quite unhappy at this point as they need to use that room, and requested a large rent credit due to the delays and inconvenience. In all total on this bedroom build out I lost another $6,000 by having the job done 3 times over, and also lost a month of time along with dozens of hours of my time, stress, and unhappy tenants.
