How to Bid Lawn Care for Apartments in Bad Shape

You find an apartment complex that is in dire need of lawn care and landscaping

maintenance.

The gate creaks when you open it. Long grass whips at your ankles. Bushes crawl all over the walls.

Should you work for a management company?

This should be an easy sale, right?

But how do you bid your lawn care services on a monstrosity like this?

Learn more about how to price your lawn care services.

Shoot too high, and you’ll lose the bid. Shoot too low, and you’ll lose money.

Break the bidding process into three steps.

Step 1. Walk the property

You’re going to need to look at every problem area with your own eyes to

accurately judge the time, and therefore the cost, of your

maintenance service.See how our SmartMaps feature can get the

square footage of any property.

- Do they have tricky flower beds?- How many trees will need trimming?- Is there something wrong with the grass?

Break up the property into pieces – try to give an estimate for every single problem area.

Show the apartment owners that you know what you’re doing and make them acknowledge this is beyond what a

“normal” property would need.

That’s a really good way to secure your bid on any apartment complex.

Step 2. Create a maintenance contract as if the apartment grounds

were already in perfect condition.

Choose a timeline that works for you (most contracts are for 12 months).

Bid on the place as if the cleanup is complete and it’s easy to maintain.

That way, when it’s time to renew the contract, they’ll remember the REAL price for the

maintenance contract, and not the extra clean up fees you had to tack on.

Step 3. Charge them a separate clean-up (Make-Ready) fee to get the

grounds back to a maintenance level.

Then give the apartment your bid, and explain

why you kept the cleanup

separate from ongoing

maintenance.

Cleanup is always harder than maintenance – do NOT undersell yourself on this.

Make sure your estimate reflects the real cost of the service, or else

you’re just wasting your time.

Often, a single overgrown area will take 10-20%

longer than it looks, so make

sure you charge accordingly.

Now, get out there, and start growing your company.

Service Autopilot has several tools to help with the bidding process.