People don’t realise that being a landlord is tricky. They think all it involves is simply purchasing a heap of properties and rolling in the cash. Boy are they wrong! I’ve been a landlord for the last two decades and one thing I’ve seen is that it’s less about bringing in the cash and more about forking out cash for maintenance. So many things can go wrong with properties, particularly commercial properties. Being a landlord for commercial properties might seem great in theory as the cash intake each month is quite healthy, but as soon as something goes wrong with a commercial property you bet your bottom dollar that you will have to pay.
One of the buildings I own is in a business park. It’s not a huge building, but it’s large enough to be able to cater to six different businesses. This building is two stories high, but is very long and built near many overhanging trees. As soon as you have overhanging trees near a building, leaves become your biggest enemy. I find myself having to pay for commercial gutter cleaning multiple times a year. In all honesty, I probably don’t have to do it more than once a year as many landlords I know simply leave the gutters as they are for years on end. I’m smarter than them. I’m aware of all the risks associated with doing that. Unfortunately that ‘she’ll be right’ attitude can fall victim to a lot of ‘short-term gain for long-term pain’. It might seem like they’re saving money, but in the long term all they’re doing is wrecking their gutters further and opening the building up to worse and more costly issues.
Luckily for me, I already know the best blocked drain plumbers. Melbourne is a city where it’s easy to get to know people. I met these plumbers last time when something odd happened to a few of the sinks in the building. I saw their business card and learned that they also do gutter cleaning. Let’s just say, they’ve got the job.