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Comment by projectramo | Hacker News Reader

This is a much needed service, and I feel like I've seen a lot of people enter this space but I wonder what happens to all of them after a few months. They seem to disappear.

The main question I have is: which cities do you operate in?

The secondary questions: How do you handle the workmen? What if you customer thinks that you charged too much?

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We currently service properties across the entire US. We have built Latchel to be geographically agnostic so we can service rentals in any city without having to establish a presence or build density. As for contractors, we will work with our customer's existing contractors if they have any, and find new ones if they dont. We work with our customers to set default budget limits for individual properties or portfolios, and then seek either their approval or their owner's approval (included with Premium service) for an increased budget if we cannot find a contractor within their budget limit. This helps prevent surprise contractor invoices and keeps budgets under control.

That is great. It seems like a lot of work. I have often wondered how hard it would be to find an honest, reliable contractor if I were to get a property in a distant city.

I would be happy to outsource all that work to you, and I hope you succeed so I can hire you. But how would you guys find one?

In other words, the issue with finding someone long distance is that you can't check them out in person, or see their work etc.

We have existing contractor networks in most of the cities we service. Whenever we enter a new area we often have to source on-demand. We vet people based on social media reviews and ensuring their licensing etc meets the local requirements.

When we send someone out from our network we are implicitly standing behind their work. The good new for us is you can tell a lot by a person's phone demeanor and business professionalism. If someone is rude or curt over the phone with us they certainly won't be polite with tenants.

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