Quote:
Originally Posted by nvmbr9
People need services year after year and all year long. It's incredibly expensive to get locals to help with second homes. The professionals must do extremely well. They take care of 50 to 60 homes and I'd say charges average 350 to 500 a month. Yes...do the math...that's 20000 a month. Forget college...that's more than doctors make. I think you can buy some insurance.
Ps. You don't need any skills. They outsource everything. Need to turn on the water...they call in plumbers. Need to put in mousetraps...they call exterminators Oh. They add a 20 pc surcharge and likely also take a kickback. It's sweet work. And yet you can't even find any but a couple
If u were actually good and honest and reasonable....you could do 100 properties in no time.
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If it's that easy, go for it. Your numbers are way off to the point of making me chuckle
I am a white collar dude who has thought long and hard about going into property and lawn care. As in having a business plan, start-up costs, already owning a lot of professional equipment, the whole nine yards. I still work for the "man"...... Done right, property care ain't cheap. The equipment needed to do 100+ propertie (just the mowing and trimming) carries a lot of expense. It's not zero cost to get machines and staff to each site so you lose efficiency from the word go. Have you priced a commercial Walker zero-turn or equivalent mower? Sure you can buy a used walk behind z-turn but even then to get something that's not beat to crap you'll need a good $1500 and that's for a 33 inch one. You ain't doing 100 yards/week with that I will assure you.
For more fun, go here:
http://www.lawnsite.com/ and check out how "easy" it is
To the OP, doing a couple neighbors lawns is one thing, but when you start branching out your liability risk increases. Don't even think about applying fertilizer, herbicides, etc to any property. Your long-time neighbor may be forgiving to damaging a lawn, hedges, or the inevitable rock into the sliding glass door/siding/screen house/car door from the trimmer or mower but the guy next door who is not paying you may not be so kind.
Business is about charging a fair price and covering your costs plus profit, not taking what a customer will give you. My advise if you want to make money is stick with a few items that you can do quickly and not a lot of start-up costs. Buy a use commercial walk behind zero turn if you really want to make any money doing lawns. You'll also need good trimmers, edgers, backpack blowers, brooms, and a lot of miscellaneous stuff you don't think about. Time = money
Light carpentry, I would stay away from as there are landmines all around. Permits, code, and the whole bit.
If you have access to trucks and trailer then stick with yard clean-ups. Don't underbid yourself. Bottom dwelling is where a lot of people fail in the landscape business.