Pricing a pre-inspection walkthrough for voucher landlords

A landlord I do turnover cleaning for failed her voucher inspection twice on the same unit. First visit it was a missing outlet cover plate and a loose stair rail. Second visit the inspector wanted the back bedroom window to actually open, which it hadn't in years. Between the two she went about seven weeks with no housing payment landing, and the tenant was already in the unit.

So I want to sell a pre-inspection walkthrough. Draft pricing is $275 for the walk plus a written punch list, then $65 an hour for the small items I can fix myself. My assumption is most units fail on four or five cheap things.

What I can't figure out is who actually buys it. The owners with twenty units know the list by heart already. The ones with two units are the people losing the seven weeks, and they're also the ones who'll walk the unit themselves for free on a Saturday.

I called two housing authorities and neither would tell me how long a re-inspection usually takes to get scheduled. That number is the whole pitch, because the value I'm selling is avoided vacancy weeks, not the punch list.

So: price it per unit each time, or as an annual thing that also covers the yearly inspection? And is $275 already too much for someone with two doors?

4 replies

-1tashaford30PB2APRO7

$275 sounds fine to me, the problem is the two-unit owner doesn't know the seven weeks exists until it happens to her once. So you're selling insurance to people who haven't had the accident yet. I'd sell it as part of the turnover you already do (bundled, not a separate line item) because they're already writing you a check that week.

3Rena Expert

The mechanism behind your pitch: housing assistance payments generally start once the unit passes inspection and the contract is executed, and for an occupied unit that fails a later inspection the authority can abate the housing portion until the item is fixed and re-verified. So the loss your client took was the housing share of rent for the weeks between the visits. The tenant's own share is governed by the lease and the authority's rules, which is a question for that authority and, if she's considering withholding or eviction, for a lawyer in that state.

Your numbers depend on one assumption: that re-inspection scheduling lag is long and variable. If the local authority re-inspects within a week, avoided vacancy is worth maybe a quarter of a month's housing payment and $275 is hard to justify. If lag runs three to six weeks, one avoided failure pays for several years of your service. Authorities differ enormously here, and the inspection standard itself has been changing at the federal level, so ask the authority in writing what their current standard is and what their median days-to-reinspection was last year. Some publish it.

On structure, an annual subscription tied to the recertification inspection date matches the risk better than per-visit pricing, because the recurring inspection is the recurring exposure. The initial move-in inspection is the one where the owner has time and a vacant unit, so it's the one they'll DIY.

The segment you're describing, two to six doors, is real and underserved. It's also price sensitive in a way twenty-door owners aren't.

0derekj19SB1B

Sell the punch list cheap and make your money on the repairs. The list is the lead, not the product.

Pricing a pre-inspection walkthrough for voucher landlords

4 replies