Running the Business · Part 2
Property managers, home-warranty companies, and realtors: volume vs. margin, and the paperwork each one lives on
Three sources send a plumber steady work at a price the plumber does not set. A property manager sends the same building's calls for years, at a negotiated rate, and needs them handled before a tenant's habitability complaint becomes a legal problem for the landlord. A home-warranty company sends dispatches at a flat trip fee with the repair pre-authorized to a cap, and pays on its own terms. A realtor sends inspection-repair jobs on a two-week escrow clock. This lesson explains what each relationship is actually buying, what it pays and does not pay, the paperwork each one requires, and how to decide how much of each a new business should take.
What the full lesson covers
- A property manager's plumbing call is a legal clock: Civil Code 1941.1 makes a rental untenantable without working plumbing and hot and cold water, so the manager needs a plumber who answers, shows up, invoices the same day, and documents. That reliability is worth more than a low rate; negotiate the rate, not the response.
- Home-warranty dispatches pay a fixed trip fee plus repairs authorized to a cap set by the company; the customer is the company, not the homeowner, and the profit is in volume, speed, and the upsell of what the contract does not cover, done honestly.
- Realtors send small, urgent, well-paying jobs on an escrow deadline, and expect a written report the inspector's lender will accept. Never pay a referral fee to a real estate licensee without checking with your CPA and their broker; keep referrals clean.
- Each source needs a packet: W-9, certificate of insurance naming them, license number, rate sheet, and an invoice format that matches their system.
- Cap the share of revenue from any single manager or warranty company. A business that is 60 percent one property manager is one phone call from 40 percent.
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- 6Advertising law for a licensed contractor: the number on every ad and the van, the word you can never use, and what a misleading ad costs
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- 9Estimate vs. quote vs. bid: the legal difference, and the moment a number becomes a contract
- 10Public works: DIR registration, prevailing wage, certified payroll, and apprentices. A separate world; know it before you bid
- 11Template: the estimate worksheet, blank and worked
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- 13Template: the first-90-days marketing plan. Thirteen weeks, one page, nothing paid