By Jeanette Joy Fisher

If you’re new to the house flipping game, you’ve probably debated whether or not to hire a handyman to help with labor and expertise. You only have so much time, energy, and money, so that debate can be a long and intense one. Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of hiring someone to help you flip your houses.

First, of course, if you do the work yourself, you’ll be saving that expense. However, if you have a regular job, that means working long nights and weekends to get the home ready to flip. It will also take much longer than if you had someone else work on it fulltime, which means your profits will take longer to come back to you. Another consideration is your hourly pay rate. If you make more than handyman wages, it might pay you to work extra hours on your job. Also, the longer you hold the property, the more payments and expenses you incur.

If you choose well, a handyman’s expertise can be invaluable to you, because they’ll know much more about how to tackle the various aspects of remodeling than you will, and their skills will generally be less expensive than subcontracting a number of individual contractors.

However, finding someone with that kind of skill level can sometimes be difficult. If possible, try to hire someone who has worked for another investor on a similar project. Since there are many people who flip houses, you’ll find that there’s a qualified workforce out there that you can tap in to.

Ask other investors for references. The more you know about a person’s skill level and work ethic, the fewer problems you’ll encounter. However, if you’re forced to hire someone you don’t know, here’s a tip: always give them a small project to complete, just to see what kind of work they do, how timely it’s completed, and if the project came in on budget. If you’re satisfied with the results of their test project, you can then give them more work. If you’re not, send them packing.

Hiring a handyman can save you money, time, and heartache in the long run–if you choose wisely and stay on top of the remodeling project every day. On the flip side, we get a lot of personal satisfaction from the work we do ourselves (and I think I paint better and faster).

The important thing about fixing and flipping houses–have fun improving neighborhoods and helping people.

Take a look at our fixer featured on TLC’s http://flipthathousewithfaux.com Flip That House.
The Habitat for Humanity project was infused with love from http://flipthathousewithfaux.com/artists_designers.html]faux artists.

Copyright © 2007 http://www.jeanettefisher.com]Jeanette Fisher

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