Yesterday (Friday), one of my tenants called about a water leak under her house (The house in which she is living has a crawl space).  She had called a plumber out to get an estimate.  The plumber’s esimate was $875 to fix the leak.  I told her I thought that was unreasonable, and I would call for a back up estimate. 

Well, my day turned quite busy, and by the time I returned to matter, it was 3:00 pm in the afternoon.  I called the plumber who gave me the estimate to get his side of the story. As it turned out, his bid of $875 was actually reasonable give the fact he would have to replace the service line from the city meter to where the service line connected to feeder line under the house. 

There is really no way to repair an old line like that because the galvanized pipe rusts out from the interior of the pipe, and it had corroded to the extent that it now had develped small pin-hole leaks. 

I gave him the O.K. on the job.  However, it’s now 4:00 pm.  He can’t start the job until monday morning because he doesn’t have someone to work over the weekend unless I pay a 50% overage (not happening). 

So I had good news and bad news for the tenant.  The good news is we had a solution for one problem that would get them water again.  The bad news was they would not have that solution until Monday.  Sorry, you’ll have to find someone to stay with over the weekend or pay a hotel bill.  The tenant was not happy. 

Had I gotten on top of the problem immediately, the plumber probably could have completed the job that day. 

Develop a "Do it now!" mindset with respect to property management.  Your customers will appreciate you more, and you’ll have less stress from that interaction.