And that’s the primary problem with the new triple contractor rates, House quality is going to severely decline in the next 10yrs as people try to do everything themselves because professional home repair has become grossly unaffordable.
I’ve been repairing and home owning for over 25 yrs. I make more money and can no longer easily afford home repair the last 3 yrs. As such, I shudder the think of what garbage is being done in homes with no capacity to afford the new higher rates right now. Even a box of construction screws and a can of paint is crazy expensive now.
House quality is already in the shitter. Hell, not even the shitter, its down the pipe and in the septic tank.
and its not cause home owners doing repairs.
Its cause developers spinning up an LLC, buying a plot of land, shitting out a development of 300+ homes in less than 6 months that just barely meet the barest minimum of code (and anything that doesnt typically given a slide thanks to a few greased palms), just to sell all the homes in the mad housing rush before shutting down the LLC and walking away with all the money and no liability on the terrible houses they’ve built that arent suitable for living in.
CyFy on youtube highlights the problem a lot (and how hard the builders and bribed inspectors go after him for threatening the grift).
And I have own personal experience witnessing more well off friends struggle with newly bought houses being built like shit at best, to needing 10s, to 100s of thousands of dollars in repairs less than a year after purchase at worse.
LLCs are licensed. As such, the owner(s) is on public record which means you track this on a .gov site. Some of these guys, as in a single real estate guy, will have a page or two of the LLC flips including land purchases fof $10 between their own LLCs.
As a contractor who takes pride in my work, seeing things like this baffles me - and honestly, it’s not that uncommon either. I just don’t get it. Even if they somehow manage to get the client to pay for this, there’s no way they’ll be hired again. Meanwhile, about half of my clients are repeat customers. No wonder it’s so easy to stand out when the bar is this low.
Thats the thing. If a customer forgot to mask off an alarm panel or two not taking the 5 minutes to do it just makes you look like a fucking asshole. If they didnt mask off a bunch of stuff then you call them, tell them that either you need to add to the estimate or rebook the job.
This is 100% a painter who’s worked with this person/company before. In the contract I’m betting it says “before we paint, remove all utilities and covers from the wall, anything left will be painted”
The first six times they did the work, stuff was left up, and they spent an hour removing everything before they started. This time, they said fuck it. We told you to take it down, this is what you’re getting now.
Probably so, but that still doesn’t justify it in my view. There are better ways to handle this. For example, they could inform the customer that the issue needs to be addressed before they proceed, offer to mask the control panel themselves for an extra charge, or simply ask if the customer really wants them to paint over it - which they almost certainly don’t.
Doing subpar work under a “not my job” mentality isn’t just unprofessional - it displays poor character.
Doing subpar work under a “not my job” mentality isn’t just unprofessional - it displays poor character.
It’s easy to say it’s poor character but we just don’t know what has transpired in the lead up to this thing being painted.
Some people are absolute assholes to work for. There may have already been significant problems in performing this contract and the person doing the work is being exploited through a bad contract or what have you.
unless they change their task rabbit account to a new name. This is the downward slide the tech gig economy is causing everywhere
Every time we had an issue with our house the HOA Karens would get into fights with us about how they can find someone on task rabbit for cheaper than the contractor we wanted to hire. Every time the work would be shit and their account would just suddenly vanish.
At least before shitty contractors had to keep registering new LLCs. Now there is literally no ramp at all to changing your business identity and paying $5 for 20 fake reviews
If I had you and you allowed me to pay you so I don’t have to learn every home repair and maintenance task myself, I’d hand over my life savings. Slight exaggeration, but not by much.
I am learning enough skills that I could eventually quit my day job and become a contractor tho…
A job that takes a professional half a day could take me a whole weekend.
But having to play “how likely are they to fuck it up, and how much of a pain will it be to fix” drives me up the wall so much, I often just buy the tool and do it myself.
My time to do it: 15 hours, plus £200 in materials.
Cheap tradesman: 8 hours, £450 total, non-zero chance I’ll have to rip it out and re-do it myself anyway.
Specialist tradesman : 5 hours, £900-1200 total.
So it either ends up being lots of work, a gamble, or lots of money. Quick, good, cheap, pick two!
I’m a good amateur mechanic. But I cant guarantee I wont order the wrong part, be sent the wrong part, have misdiagnosed the problem, the job turns out to be a nightmare etc… So as long as the other one is running, I have time and ability to sort it out.
This pretty much sums up my view of contractors. I know enough about home improvement these days, after years of DIY, I could probably get a job as a subcontractor.
Landlord wants the job done fast, meanwhile the contractors know that the landlord isn’t the one actually living there so they can get away with cutting corners.
This painting wasn’t done carefully with a brush or roller, it was done by spraying with a jet of paint.
It took them no time at all to paint this, because they just blasted it at the same time they were doing the rest of the wall, without even caring it was there.
What would have taken time would be to try and carefully spray around without getting any paint on it (or the proper solution, to remove it from the wall before painting)
As a homeowner I’m more convinced this is the quality of contractors these days. For triple pre-2020 prices.
We stealthed your keyboard thingy. No need to thank us.
MRW I BECAME A HOMEOWNER:
And that’s the primary problem with the new triple contractor rates, House quality is going to severely decline in the next 10yrs as people try to do everything themselves because professional home repair has become grossly unaffordable.
I’ve been repairing and home owning for over 25 yrs. I make more money and can no longer easily afford home repair the last 3 yrs. As such, I shudder the think of what garbage is being done in homes with no capacity to afford the new higher rates right now. Even a box of construction screws and a can of paint is crazy expensive now.
House quality is already in the shitter. Hell, not even the shitter, its down the pipe and in the septic tank.
and its not cause home owners doing repairs.
Its cause developers spinning up an LLC, buying a plot of land, shitting out a development of 300+ homes in less than 6 months that just barely meet the barest minimum of code (and anything that doesnt typically given a slide thanks to a few greased palms), just to sell all the homes in the mad housing rush before shutting down the LLC and walking away with all the money and no liability on the terrible houses they’ve built that arent suitable for living in.
CyFy on youtube highlights the problem a lot (and how hard the builders and bribed inspectors go after him for threatening the grift).
And I have own personal experience witnessing more well off friends struggle with newly bought houses being built like shit at best, to needing 10s, to 100s of thousands of dollars in repairs less than a year after purchase at worse.
https://youtube.com/@cyfyhomeinspections
LLCs are licensed. As such, the owner(s) is on public record which means you track this on a .gov site. Some of these guys, as in a single real estate guy, will have a page or two of the LLC flips including land purchases fof $10 between their own LLCs.
As a contractor who takes pride in my work, seeing things like this baffles me - and honestly, it’s not that uncommon either. I just don’t get it. Even if they somehow manage to get the client to pay for this, there’s no way they’ll be hired again. Meanwhile, about half of my clients are repeat customers. No wonder it’s so easy to stand out when the bar is this low.
Thats the thing. If a customer forgot to mask off an alarm panel or two not taking the 5 minutes to do it just makes you look like a fucking asshole. If they didnt mask off a bunch of stuff then you call them, tell them that either you need to add to the estimate or rebook the job.
This is 100% a painter who’s worked with this person/company before. In the contract I’m betting it says “before we paint, remove all utilities and covers from the wall, anything left will be painted”
The first six times they did the work, stuff was left up, and they spent an hour removing everything before they started. This time, they said fuck it. We told you to take it down, this is what you’re getting now.
I like to think this is the case. I’d prefer to think it was the customer who screwed this up rather than the contractor.
Probably so, but that still doesn’t justify it in my view. There are better ways to handle this. For example, they could inform the customer that the issue needs to be addressed before they proceed, offer to mask the control panel themselves for an extra charge, or simply ask if the customer really wants them to paint over it - which they almost certainly don’t.
Doing subpar work under a “not my job” mentality isn’t just unprofessional - it displays poor character.
It’s easy to say it’s poor character but we just don’t know what has transpired in the lead up to this thing being painted.
Some people are absolute assholes to work for. There may have already been significant problems in performing this contract and the person doing the work is being exploited through a bad contract or what have you.
unless they change their task rabbit account to a new name. This is the downward slide the tech gig economy is causing everywhere
Every time we had an issue with our house the HOA Karens would get into fights with us about how they can find someone on task rabbit for cheaper than the contractor we wanted to hire. Every time the work would be shit and their account would just suddenly vanish.
At least before shitty contractors had to keep registering new LLCs. Now there is literally no ramp at all to changing your business identity and paying $5 for 20 fake reviews
If I had you and you allowed me to pay you so I don’t have to learn every home repair and maintenance task myself, I’d hand over my life savings. Slight exaggeration, but not by much.
I am learning enough skills that I could eventually quit my day job and become a contractor tho…
This is why I end up doing so much DIY.
A job that takes a professional half a day could take me a whole weekend.
But having to play “how likely are they to fuck it up, and how much of a pain will it be to fix” drives me up the wall so much, I often just buy the tool and do it myself.
My time to do it: 15 hours, plus £200 in materials.
Cheap tradesman: 8 hours, £450 total, non-zero chance I’ll have to rip it out and re-do it myself anyway.
Specialist tradesman : 5 hours, £900-1200 total.
So it either ends up being lots of work, a gamble, or lots of money. Quick, good, cheap, pick two!
This is also why I own 2 shitbox cars.
I’m a good amateur mechanic. But I cant guarantee I wont order the wrong part, be sent the wrong part, have misdiagnosed the problem, the job turns out to be a nightmare etc… So as long as the other one is running, I have time and ability to sort it out.
This pretty much sums up my view of contractors. I know enough about home improvement these days, after years of DIY, I could probably get a job as a subcontractor.
Combination, right.
Landlord wants the job done fast, meanwhile the contractors know that the landlord isn’t the one actually living there so they can get away with cutting corners.
…and not cutting in corners!
Sorry.
This actually took more effort!
How so?
They could have just not painted it
This painting wasn’t done carefully with a brush or roller, it was done by spraying with a jet of paint.
It took them no time at all to paint this, because they just blasted it at the same time they were doing the rest of the wall, without even caring it was there.
What would have taken time would be to try and carefully spray around without getting any paint on it (or the proper solution, to remove it from the wall before painting)
Its done by some random dude that the landlord found in a HomeDepot Parking Lot
Oh how I wish that were a given.