Title: Exchanging Work for Rent
Often, people get the bright idea that they can exchange rent for work on or about their rented premises.
This generally doesn’t work, because the use of the rental premises “goes on”
but natural delays like bad weather or waiting for certain materials to become available, etc., delays the performance of the work that the Landlord needs as “payment” of his rent on a timely basis.
and sometimes, when the tenant just doesn’t feel like working “just then,”
or if he doesn’t like the task assigned to him, or if he has other things to do that are more important to him than doing the Landlord’s work,
he may “use” one of these reasons as an excuse not to do it,
thus, the Landlord’s “Rent,” just doesn’t get performed “on time” very often …
but the tenant continues to use the rented premises DAILY.
Over time, this almost always results in the parties feeling “bad about the deal,”
and even getting angry at each other, maybe to the point of making the Landlord want to “escape” his deal,
and probably to the detriment of them both.
But, there is Better Way to Accomplish the exchange of rent for work … and the parties don’t get angry:
Merely tell the tenant that you will pay him cash for the jobs as they are completed, but that he must pay the rent “in cash & on time.”
This “turns the tables” and now “permits” the deal to work well, because now,
the tenant is quite anxious for you “to find jobs” for him to do, to offset against his rent
and anxiously wants to complete those jobs “on time” before the 1st of the month, so that the rental does not ever become “delinquent.”
If you do this, the only problem remaining between Landlord and Tenant, is the negotiation between Landlord and Tenant over the price of the services …
for the Tenant will want to get a bigger price than the Landlord wants to pay, and
if the Landlord doesn’t feel like he is “being taken advantage of” when the Tenant quotes that price, all can proceed.
Often, if a Tenant has a tendency to make the price “too large” for the services that he will render, it is a Good Idea for the Landlord to hire an independent outsider who will perform the work Landlord wants done,
so that the Tenant can observe it being done by another party instead of himself.
This should encourage him to try to keep the prices “fair” when he and the Landlord negotiate for the price of the Tenant’s services on future projects.
And if the parties can’t agree, from time to time, for whatever reason,
the Landlord still gets his rent in cash on the 1st of the month.
Robert Jorrie,
1990