I’ve bid a few nasty houses the past month, some are HW only, others are concrete and HW. It seems people are balking at my prices, they seem to come out around $150/hr the best I can tell. They seem all excited at first, very happy to find someone that will get all that crap off.
I’m not hurting for business as WC is running about 80% now, but I don’t take rejection lightly and wonder if I should lower rates somewhat.
For example, a guy saw my trailer as I was coming home and asked for a bid on four sides of a smallish 2 story plus small 25’ driveway. I gave about $320, he said he would “check around”.
you may be a little strong for your area. You know it better than us. I’d probably be a little under $300 for something like that. Basically around .10-.11 per sq ft of house including sq ft of garage. 25’ drive would be prob $50-$60.
Don’t base what WE tell you on here. Call 2-3 qualified competitors that do good work and have reviews to prove it if possible, and say your a real estate agent looking to put a few houses on the market. Get them to give you quotes for all different sizes of properties. Figure out whether you want to go with the flow, or be slightly above (or below if you choose to do so) of the competition. Here, a smaller 2 storey + 25’ driveway would be $1000 easy.
And you’ll complain about having to pay so much for equipment, lol. I need a summer place in Ontario. Of course I’d need to bring a semi full of chems to get me thru it. One good summer could retire lol.
Out West haha. In London still easily 700-800 Max! When I retire I’m going to have to make a series on how to sell and build value. I’ve been doing sales for years now.
I hate this Idea. I think that is so sneaky and bad business. Had it done to me a few yrs ago and the guy even made me come out to his house. He tarped his trailer so i went up to the trailer and flipped the tarp and seen the power washing trailer and i then proceeded to vividly explain how i felt about him wasting my time and i told him his price was 1$ for the work and $2000 for his education. Grand total of $2001 and then I asked him when he wants me start as i was driving away in my truck.
Yeah I had a WC ‘competitor’ fake call my wife a while back asking what my prices are, pretending to be a customer. He then ripped into her saying, “we have a set price here, you can’t do that”.
Love it or hate it, the lad has to know what to charge in his area. It’s called doing research. May be gritty sometimes but do it properly and you come out ahead. There is no “national going rate” like there are for plenty of other services. I have a good relationship with other established companies here and we all have an “unspoken deal” on pricing. 99% of quotes are done in a 10-15% differentiation here. Sure there are 99$ house washers but we don’t even pay attention to them. Might not be that easy in other places as people see competition as the devil. Gotta get creative.
How about he just figures out what he needs to charge to be profitable. After doing it for a little while you will soon realize what other guys are charging and be competitive from there.
Looking at it that way only works to an extent. If the 99$ guy does enough houses he’s profitable too. I’ve been told quite a few times my prices are too high… I might lose out on a few jobs here and there but I work a lot less to make more. It’s important to know what others are charging so A) you don’t undercut the market B) so your not getting 0 reception because your over charging by 75%.
It’s a little different in my case, I’m a veteran window cleaner that also offers pressure washing. Most of my services tend to be a package deal, so when I spot up their windows they want them cleaned too.
I dont give prices out until I see a property. If I find out it’s a competitor I go out of my way to screw them every chance I get. It’s annoying and dishonest on there part. But what really pisses me off is that if they just called me an introduced themselves and were willing to share info with me equally, I would gladly tell them what I charge.
I completely agree… Don’t go around lying/deceiving people because you don’t know how to operate your business. You can do all the market research you want but be honest about it.
A direct “competitor” in the areas that we do most of our work reached out to me the other day for this… he was going to bid a big job and wanted to know how much to charge (he’s not professional, doesn’t have a good set up, doesn’t have insurance, etc. etc.)…He was honest about it and straight forward so I gave him my answer - I normally shoot to make $150-$200 per hour, so I would take that amount and multiply it by the amount of hours it will take me to do… and that’s the price… that being said, with his set up and equipment, using my method of pricing he will probably come in 8-10x more expensive than myself… simply put, this guy takes an entire day to wash a 2 story box 2,500 sq ft house…
I dont care what anyone is doing, it’s going to serve you far better in the long run to have strong ethics. Moral of the story dont be a dishonest POS calling around pretending to be a realtor. Go work at mcdonalds, you will be better off, rather than running your business that way. Take that crap over to facebook where it belongs.
Then try someone else. Be honest with them, heck buy them a beer and a burger on the weekend and meet them face to face. Show them that you’re honest and just want to get a feel for the market you’re in.
