Here’s a sign of the times: Greg the Handyman called yesterday to see if we were ready to line up him and his son to do some of the various chores at my house and M’hijito’s. In the course of chatting, he said the two of them were totally out of work. His son, a finish cabinetmaker, was laid off his job when the construction company he worked for folded. That’s not surprising. But what is scary is that Greg himself hasn’t had any business. He said his business phone had rung all of three times in the past week.
This is a guy who was so busy he couldn’t keep up with the work. You often couldn’t get him to come do repairs at all, because he didn’t have time. He refused to work outside the North Central area—for those who don’t know Phoenix, that is not a large district—and still had more work than he could handle. He used to drive around in a Mercedes convertible.
An ancient one, but still…a Mercedes.
It suggests that not only are people not buying and selling real estate, they’re not maintaining it, either. And if you’ve been inside a Home Depot or a Lowe’s lately, you might surmise that they’re not doing the handyman tasks themselves. What that means, I think, is a general deterioration in property here. The central-city houses are pretty old—mine was built in 1971, and it’s in a relatively “new” tract for this part of town. The outlying suburbs are so cheaply thrown together as to defy belief…I remember the day one of my friends learned that rain was leaking in because the contractor hadn’t bothered to install flashing around the roof vents in her new house. And the time another couple of friends had to remove and replace the “lifetime” tile roof on their four-year-old house, built by a contractor who was not required by the state or the county to provide any warranty on his work.
So you can be sure plenty of maintenance needs to be done on these shacks. It’s just not getting done.
Greg is trying to make up for it by overcharging. He wanted $1,500 to paint the trim on the little Investment House. Plus the cost of the paint. Gimme a break! Bila the Painter offered to do it for $800, and that included Dunn-Edwards paint.
At any rate, the cost of the smaller tasks is within reason, so he’ll soon be installing a new room air conditioner for me (hope that scheme works to save on the summer power bills!), replacing the busted smoke alarm and putting in one near the kitchen here, and installing the blinds and fixing a few things at the other house.
Photo: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
The prices where I live have gone down dramatically.
That may be because they rose to ridiculous heights post-Katrina and stayed there during the housing bubble. They are way down now.
Yes,I feel he is charging huge a amount while the price rate is getting down day by day.Why dont you check with other offersand then start your work?!