If you are a plumber, electrician, locksmith or painter, or you run a cleaning or maintenance company, you know that a private customer is one job and a homeowners’ association is a source of recurring work. A building with sixty homes produces breakdowns every month, has annual contracts and, if you do things well, the property manager calls you for the other communities in their portfolio.
The problem is how to get in. Most professionals depend on word of mouth, on a resident who already knew them or on having left a card in the lobby. And then come the quotes that get sent and nobody answers.
This article explains how jobs are really awarded in a community of owners, what the property manager looks at before calling you and how to put yourself where they can find you.
Who really decides in a homeowners’ association
Here is the first misunderstanding that costs jobs. The professional usually talks to the resident who calls them, or to the president, and assumes that is enough. It is not. You need to understand the real circuit:
- The resident reports the breakdown. They neither hire nor decide.
- The property manager handles the incident, requests quotes and makes the proposal. They are your real point of contact and the one who will call you again.
- The president represents the community and signs, but does not usually choose alone.
- The owners’ meeting approves any expense that goes beyond the ordinary.
In other words: for routine and urgent repairs, the property manager decides in practice; for works of a certain amount a resolution of the owners’ meeting is needed, and there your quote will compete with two others on a table, read by people who are not in the trade.
This has a very specific consequence: your quote has to be able to defend itself without you in the room. The property manager is not going to explain why your labour item is more expensive. If it is not clear on paper, you lose.
What a property manager looks at before hiring you
A property manager who runs twenty communities answers to twenty owners’ meetings. When they hire you, their credibility is at stake. That is why they always look at the same things, and it pays to have them ready before you are asked:
- Public liability insurance in force, with enough cover for the type of work. It is the first thing requested and the one most often missing.
- Registration for the activity and being up to date with your obligations.
- An itemised quote, line by line: materials, labour, units and unit price. A single amount with no breakdown is very hard to approve at an owners’ meeting.
- Completion time and warranty in writing, before you start.
- Responsiveness. In an emergency (a leak, a lift, an electrical panel) whoever answers the phone gets the job.
None of these five things is about being cheaper. They are about the property manager being able to justify their choice.
The mistake that costs the most community jobs
It deserves a section of its own because it happens constantly: quoting over the phone and never following up in writing.
The professional goes, sees the breakdown, tells the property manager “this will be about twelve hundred” and waits for the call. The property manager has another thirty open cases, needs to take three comparable quotes to the owners’ meeting, and yours does not exist on paper. It is not that you were ruled out: it is that they could not present you.
Always send the quote in writing, even if it is short, on the same day as the visit. It is the difference between being part of the comparison or not.
How to get on a property manager’s list
The traditional way is to know someone. The other is to be where the property manager looks when they do not know anyone: an on-call plumber for a new community, a professional in an area their usual one does not cover, or a third quote they need for an owners’ meeting.
In the FixrOS marketplace, property managers search for professionals by service category and by proximity, on a map. Signing up means appearing in that search for the communities in your area.
Signing up involves completing a profile that answers what the property manager is going to look at: the service categories you work in, your location, your documentation (this is where you upload your public liability insurance and whatever proves your activity), a gallery of completed jobs and your availability.
What working from the portal is like
Once you are in, work does not arrive in stray emails. You have your own portal where everything happens:
- Job requests from the communities, with the description of the incident and the photos the resident already took.
- Quotes, which you send from there and which stay linked to the case. They do not get lost in an inbox.
- Calendar and availability, so that when a slot is booked, that slot is taken and nobody double-books you.
- Messages with the property manager inside the case, not in a WhatsApp group.
- Jobs in progress, with their status, and the close-out when you finish.
- Payments and reviews from the communities you have already worked for.
Reviews matter more than they seem to. They can only be written by someone who has hired you and closed a job with you inside the system, so they are not just anyone’s opinions: they are the track record a new property manager will look at before calling you for the first time.
Private customers find you too
There is a source of work that professionals in the sector tend to overlook. The residents of those communities use the same app, and from it they hire for their own home: replacing a tap, painting the living room, fixing a roller blind.
That is, coming in through the community’s door puts you in front of the sixty owners of that building as potential customers for their own homes. For a neighbourhood professional, that is often worth more than the community contract itself.
Frequently asked questions about working for homeowners’ associations
How many quotes does a community ask for?
Three is usual for significant expenses, although the Spanish Horizontal Property Act (LPH) does not set a number. It is a good management practice that many property managers apply and that some communities have written into their rules. For urgent, low-value repairs, one is usually enough.
Do I need public liability insurance to work in a community?
It is not a universal legal requirement for every activity, but in practice it is essential: practically no property manager hires without it, because they answer to the community for any damage caused by the professional they proposed.
Who pays me, the community or the property manager?
The community of owners, which is the one that hires. The property manager handles the payment out of the community’s accounts, but the customer is the community, and the invoice is made out to it.
Can I work for several communities of the same property manager?
Yes, and that is what you are after. A property manager with a portfolio who is satisfied with a professional tends to propose them in their other communities, because it lowers their risk. The first job done well is the door to the next ones.
What happens if the owners’ meeting does not approve my quote?
The expense does not go ahead, or another quote is chosen. Always ask the property manager for the reason: often it is not the price but a missing breakdown, completion time or warranty, and that is something you can fix for next time.
How do I sign up as a supplier?
By completing your professional profile with your service categories, your area, the documentation that proves your activity and your insurance, and your availability. From then on you appear in the searches of the property managers in your area.
You may also like
- FixrOS for community suppliers
- How a community’s budget is approved
- The FixrOS marketplace of professionals
Conclusion
Community jobs are not won by being the cheapest, but by being the one the property manager can defend before an owners’ meeting: with insurance, with an itemised quote, with a completion time and a warranty, and by answering the phone when there is an emergency. The rest is being where they look for you on the day they need a professional in your area and do not know any.