Wondering if any of you guys have ever washed the homes in a mobile home park. A local owner asked me to give him a quote on washing his park. It would consist of 37 homes…about equal amounts of single and doublewides. Homes are close together, could wash 2 before having to move the truck. Most are vinyl sided…only a couple are alum. He said that he is not concerned with perfection…just wants them gone over and looking better. Also, only 2 small porches in the park and I would only have to put tape on the door locks…no outside electrical on them.
I have never priced one of these…in looking at them, I think I could do about 3 per hour and I was thinking about $50 per unit straight through. Does that sound about right or I am off.
$1850 sounds pretty low for 37 trailers. You SURE you can do 3 per hour? Also, in most mobile home parks around here, the occupants actually own the home and just rent the lot… That opens you up to a whole lot more liability. The park owner might not care if you disturb a little oxidation, but the home owners sure will. I’d at least double that figure and try to be done in 2 days
*Edit: I’ve never washed a mobile home, but I’m tempted all the time to quote them
I think 3 per hour would be no problem. This is just a soap’em and rinse…NOTHING else…no shrubbery or anything around them and front side water faucets to get water. Seriously, this is as easy as a park could probably be.
I would like to double that figure and that is where I started…he won’t do that. I can’t get more than 150 per hour in my market…I can get that at 50 per unit.
A couple of $900 days doesn’t sound terrible. I’d still walk the park and look at each one just to make sure there’s no surprises. Is he price-conditioned yet?
I’d be taking into consideration: notifying the renters or trusting the owner to do it, pets in the yard, vehicles obstructing you or slowing you down, and outside spigot working on each home/every other home.
I’ve washed mobile homes. Those owners usually don’t take very good care of the outside, they have TONS of dirt that fall out from behind the gutters because the roofs are so bad. 3 an hour is an unrealistic expectation. I charged anywhere from 250- 300 a Mobile home and i wouldn’t do it for a penny less.
You did not read my post…this is not perfection…this is go over them (and those are his words, not mine) and I can do 3 of these per hour…with the 8gpm I can soap them as quick is I walk down them. Rinsing will take slightly longer tha soaping…like it always does. I can do 2 without moving the truck…soap both and rinse…pull up and do it again…average 3 per hour. I am very familiar with the park…no nuances that I am not aware of. My question is about the price…might try 60 but if he won’t do that…I will probably do them for the 50.
I’d be a higher but I know you’re market is a little tougher. I don’t do very many but I normally charge about $200 for most mobile homes but that’s just going and doing one. If I was doing that many and, could hit one after the other without any obstructions in the way, I’d probably be at $100-$125 per unit. I guess you have to look at the situation too. You can’t price these the same as you would a single mobile home because it’s basically a commercial job and they always shoot for the lowest price. It’s just the way it works. The more there are the less you charge. I think your $50-$75 for your area might be about right. Seems low to me but I’ve read enough of your posts to know it’s different there. If you can hit $150 an hour I’d go for it. You can’t go out on the pontoon and don’t have anything else to do right now so maybe even do it for $100 an hour…lol
I can’t wash something half a**. It’s either clean or not and I’ll set that expectation… that’s just me. I can’t be told to barely clean something then have an upset client because I didn’t clean it enough to be worth their money. Like what is there version of “just go over it”… gray areas I don’t like. my 2 cents.
I do trailers one off for $175 if they’re just singlewides with no porches or additional structures, within my park (otherwise, my usual minimum of $250 applies). I usually schedule them for the last job of the day, so it’s just a bonus and not taking time away from better paying work.
I’ve taken upwards of an hour to wash a single trailer, due to stubborn lichens and really heavy growth on skirting and soffits. I sometimes find myself going over those trouble areas 3-4 times with a pretty hot DS mix. 12v might’ve made more sense for those situations, but then I’d have a second hose to manage.
Planning on just using a soft brush on all the soffits might be a real time saver. It’s saved me a lot of time and chemical recently on some nastier jobs.
Just like condos, I would have very specific instructions for the tenants on how they should have their homes prepped. Open windows, stuff outside, etc., would get that area skipped.
Water access might be an issue (unless you’re planning on using hydrants). It seems like one out of every three or four trailers in our park have no outside water access. They will usually have a spigot behind the skirting where the water supply goes up into their trailer, but I wouldn’t mess with someone else’s skirting to get to the water supply.
(This one’s perhaps a little out of the box, but I’ve contemplated it many times when assessing larger jobs):
If you are going to hook up to one trailer to wash 2 or 3 at a time, and the tenants pay for their own water, plan on bribing that tenant with a $5 or $10 bill and a pre-printed note explaining how they are helping you keep your costs down, and you’ll be using only a couple bucks of their water.
I really can’t see washing a trailer for less than $75, no matter how many in a row, or how easily they can be done. But $225/hr is the base rate I shoot for.
I got back with him and we struck a deal…part of t he deal, and the part I like most is that I can do them on whatever schedule I like; I work by myself and it is hot and these things are mostly in direct sun. What that means is that about 4hrs of that is all I want and that 4hrs will allow me to do all of one section of the park…park has 4 sections. There are other mobile homes in each section that he does not own and I will just skip those units. So, I will get the park done in 4 half-days…it actually will not take me 4hrs to the sections. This park is 5 miles from home…so, that will work well for me, too.
Amid our negotiation, he got me a $450 job washing his friends home.
