I just did a 900.00 house today 2 1/2 hrs…people pay you if they see value in you.
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This is true too…I’d be willing to bet we could find a case where while washing a house, our equipment was of higher value than the house…
I know this must be true, because I’ve got more into my work rig than I have into our mobile home… 
I carry 300 gallons of water most the time so wells are not an issue. My truck also gets 8mpg…
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I think a lot of people could easily raise their prices. I’ve found that focusing on quality instead of price usually attracts better customers too.
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Mine have gone up every year and then went up twice this year.
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90% of the houses i wash are on wells. Ive had one well that was pumping out about 2 gpm. That was on my first year and I didnt have a buffer tank yet (It was probably my 3rd house ever). I was lucky enough to have brought my backup 2.4 gpm portable machine to get the deck cleaning done. But we have a lot of minerals and rust in iur water. There is always a small layer of solids at the bottom of my buffer tank, on matter how often i drain it. Also, my average house wash is $450.
Really? We run 8gpms with 275 on the truck, and it wouldn’t touch most of the well jobs we see…that’s why I made the 600 gallon hog for this year (that, and I had the tanks available from rebuilding the trucks during the offseason, lol)
Yeah, I thought we were doing well with 2 increases this year, but got chastised by the accountant for not doing them quarterly in this economy…
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Quoting: "couldn’t imagine getting $500 for a house wash when it takes an hour and you use $10 worth of chemicals. "
So as stated we are not charging just for our time but all those other things. But even if it was your time, you forget the time it takes to answer calls and emails, do estimates, send quotes, invoicing, equipment maintenance, driving, and the dozens of other necessary tasks that take time in order to be able to provide the service properly in the first place. Even researching on this forum. So that 1 hour you spoke of is probably 4 hours.
We have invested and risked a lot to make this happen, time, effort, money; it needs to be worth it at the end of the day. Oh and where are your benefits and pension plans?
We need to charge enough. We need to respect our work if we want others to respect it. Not talking to you personally just my perspective on the subject.
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Two monkeys and an 11 year old could run a pressure washing business and wash houses. I’m happy for whatever y’all make, but we ain’t worth $500 an hour.
I disagree, first because no one is talking about pocketing 500$/hr after expenses 40 hours a week, so not about $/hr / salary but rather what a customer is willing to pay to have service done properly.
Secondly because an 11 year old and two monkeys would earn more than 500$/hr from people buying tickets to watch.
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This is spot on. 
I have a different target market based on not only my location, but my business goals. This is a second career for me that I only have time to wash 4-5 houses a week. I live in a densely populated city with 10s of thousands of vinyl cookie cutter homes. These are not people that are typically willing to spend $500 for something that dozens of others offer for a fraction of that when the results are the same. Are there people willing to pay that, sure, but most are not. Am I that $99 guy? Absolutely not! I agree my quality of work and experience should command more money, and it does compared to what I’ve seen advertised. In my area, I see advertising anywhere from $99-$350 for house washing. I don’t know of anyone paying $500+, or if they are, no one is admitting it and recommending companies that charge that.
My business model is to be the guy that everyone knows is local, their neighbor that is a small business with reasonable prices and does an amazing job. This allows me to spend absolutely zero time or money advertising. All of my jobs are due to recommendations. After a job I’m occasionally asked for my card, that’s the extent of my advertising. Social media recommendations, but mostly word of mouth. Now that I’ve been doing this for going on 5 years, all my calls start with either “you cleaned my house 3 years ago”’, or “my neighbor/friend/family game me your number”. Most of my jobs is within 10 minutes of my house, typically less. This is another reason I don’t need to charge more. No time finding leads and no real travel time means higher margins at the end of the day. If I wanted to scale up, I easily could dump money in advertising, branch out past my own city and raise my prices. For my situation, that doesn’t make sense to do that. Everyone’s situation is different, so throwing out what you charge and thinking anyone that charges less is losing out just isn’t accurate.
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^^ agreed 100%.
Judging others on their pricing, whether they’re higher or lower, is kind of arrogant and narrow-minded.
(No offense to anyone who has posted somewhat judgmental comments in the past; I believe most of those comments have been in the interest of being helpful, not hurtful)
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Nickski you seem like a smart guy that is way more organized than i am. And i understand this is a second income for you so you don’t need the volume full-time washers do.
I agree, many factors need to be considered for pricing, we cannot compare. But i still disagree with the reasoning of comparing the rates of our professional service with the hourly wage of an employee, partly for the reasons stated (risk, investment of time money and effort).
Different business models can work. William (IBS) seems to be financially successful with the pricing structure he has shared in a previous post. I would go bankrupt in a week with this pricing. But his crew and system seem to be much more efficient than most so at the end of the day they do make more money than most so it is a winning strategy. I’m trying to learn a little bit from everyone here and get better at this.
My response was aimed at encouraging guys that don’t charge enough because they don’t think they can. I’m not here making money like some people on Facebook groups say they make in 40 minutes… But after 6 years of hard work in this business i’m making more than if i had stayed at my construction job. And i’m grateful for that as i’m able to better provide for my family.
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Smart accountant.
We are worth what folks are willing to pay for our work.
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I run into this often here in central FL, I have put 2 inline filters on before the tank and another before my machines. If confirmed with a 40 gallon tank none is making it to the machines. Just sucks cleaning out the tank ever now and then. But I typically do not like to draw from a well.
