A Well Maintained Yard
This is a question I hear a lot from my clients, and this week from the owner of Pistachio Hair Studio.
It’s a tricky question since most of these people are unlicensed and typically do not belong to a professional organization, such as the California Landscape Contractors Association (CLCA). Unlicensed contractors, even those who do ‘just’ maintenance, are breaking the law if they contract with you to do more than $500 worth of work in one contract. Not only this, but if there is a problem with their work, there is no recourse open to you to have the work completed or put right; there is also no guarantee that they carry workers compensation insurance for the employees, putting your home at risk if they should have an accident while on your property. Professional maintenance companies will supplement their income by looking for ways to carry out improvement projects within their regular maintenance jobs. This is when they will typically break the law, if they are unlicensed, by going over the $500 limit.
So a good place to start looking for a professional licensed landscape maintenance company is to go to your local landscape contractors association, and here in San Diego that would be the San Diego Chapter of the CLCA.
In terms of pricing, you may be surprised at their rates, but as with anything in life, you get what you pay for.
On the one hand, you may think that landscaping is easy, requires no qualifications, and therefore you should be paying minimum wage for the service. There may be people out there willing to do your maintenance for that, but let’s run through some numbers so you are clear about what you are getting.
Minimum wage in California is $8.25/hour. As an employer, I need to be paying payroll tax (unemployment, Social Security, etc) on that $8.25/hour, so it actually costs an employer $10.23. On top of that I need to recover the money it costs to run our office, to pay for our advertising, and pay our insurance. Most landscape maintenance companies work on a figure of around $5-$10 per man hour, so this would put the hourly rate up to between $16 to $21 per hour. Notice that at this point, we are not making any profit; any business needs to make at least some profit so that they can grow their business, investing in training etc. It might surprise you to know that the industry benchmark for landscape maintenance company’s net profits is around 10% (although the reality is often lower, say 0% to 5%). In terms of our cost per labor hour, we are now looking at around $18 to $23 per hour. Once you add in the cost of the equipment (truck, mower, blower, hedge trimmers), you can add in another couple of dollars per hour – $20-$25/hour for a minimum wage employee.
Most crews have two or three people, and let’s say they are in your yard for 30 minutes once per week. One of those three people will be considered an experienced person, so they may get paid more than minimum wage – lets say $14/hour – less than $25,000 per year, hardly enough to keep a family of four on. The employer has to ‘sell’ that person’s time at around $30/hour. So our crew and their equipment costs about $80 per hour. We said they would be in your yard for about 30 minutes, but what about the time it takes to get to your yard? What about the time it takes to load up the equipment on the truck in the morning, or unload it at night? What about disposal fees for waste? What about materials costs for fertilizer or mulch? How about paid vacation, paid sick leave, health insurance, retirement? We are at $80 per hour, and we still don’t have everything covered.
My figures are just a rough outline of the costs involved in providing a maintenance service. I know there will be others in the industry who will tell me they are off here or there, but the truth of the matter is, unless you are a pretty experienced business owner and you have been through your own costs and pricing multiple times, you will not have these figures right. I believe that most residential landscape maintenance companies are underestimating their costs, especially those who are unlicensed.
I think the other problem with these maintenance companies is that home owners expect too much from them. The employees are not generally well educated in plants, soil or irrigation – many home owners only want to pay minimum wage, right, so why would they be? They know how to plant a plant but not what type of plant to plant and where; they know how to switch on an irrigation system but not how to make that system more efficient or even sometimes how long to run it for; they can put down mulch but they dont understand why it’s necessary and they won’t point out that it’s needed.
So, bottom line, if you want someone to come in to your yard, mow your lawn and clean off the hardscape you need a ‘mow, blow and go guy’, but don’t expect him (or her) to be proactive about caring for your landscape, improving your soil, and reducing your water usage.
Most maintenance companies make their money by getting your yard ‘maintained’ as quickly as possible and moving on to the next job. The equivalent of getting 10 haircuts done in a day rather than just 8 – so they end up doing the same cut for everyone, rather than customizing the treatment for the client.
Good luck in your search!
Diane E Downey is the owner of The Yard Fairy Inc, a North San Diego County based award winning landscape design and installation company creating low water, low maintenance landscapes that are as functional as they are pleasing to the eye. To arrange your consultation with The Yard Fairy, please call 760 804 1661 or email info at yardfairy.com today.
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