Choosing a plumber (or roofer, or elevator co.) for a small building

The plumber your building has used for eight years is the most valuable relationship your board has that you don’t own. If they retire tomorrow, or their shop is sold, or they simply raise their rates, you’ll spend six months figuring out who to replace them with, and probably pay $8,000 to $30,000 more than you needed to during those six months.

Nobody talks about vendor relationships as institutional assets. They should. For a small self-managed building, five to eight core vendors — plumber, electrician, elevator co., HVAC/boiler, roofer, landscaper, snow removal (in cold climates), and general handyman — represent the majority of the operational spending across a decade. Getting each of them right matters more than which accounting software you pick, or which management company you hire, or how the reserve fund is invested.

This is a playbook for how to pick them, how to keep the relationship healthy, and how to make sure the next board inherits the Rolodex you built.

The three tiers of vendor relationships

Not every vendor deserves the same treatment. There are roughly three tiers:

Tier 1: Recurring core vendors. The elevator company on annual service. The plumber you use for anything under $2,000. The electrician who’s been to the building six times. These relationships benefit from continuity — the vendor learns the building, knows the quirks, remembers where the shutoffs are. Switching costs are real.

Tier 2: Recurring one-project vendors. The roofer who did the 2020 replacement. The window installer from 2022. You don’t call them monthly, but when a related issue comes up you want them first. The relationship is warranty-dependent for a few years.

Tier 3: Capital-project vendors. The general contractor on a building-envelope project. Very deliberate selection, RFP-based, one-time relationship. Different playbook entirely.

Most of this post is about Tier 1. Tier 2 shares most of the same playbook. Tier 3 is a separate topic.

What makes a good Tier 1 vendor

The obvious criteria — price, availability, quality of work — are necessary and not sufficient. The distinguishing criteria are less obvious and more valuable:

They know the building. After the third visit, a good vendor starts remembering the quirks: which valve is shared between two units, which fob reader is finicky, which access route to the mechanical room is fastest. This memory saves 30 minutes per visit and prevents mistakes.

They document what they did. A service report that says “replaced element” is nearly worthless. A service report that says “replaced element (Honeywell model 5432), cleaned burner compartment, noted small leak at compression fitting on incoming line — should be revisited in Q3” is a real record.

They’re honest about what they don’t know. The best plumbers will tell you when a problem is outside their sweet spot and recommend a specialist. The bad ones will attempt the specialty work anyway, poorly, and bill you for it.

They handle emergencies without making them worse. Sunday 2 AM calls are the test. A good vendor gets to the building, does what’s needed, doesn’t over-scope, and follows up in normal hours with the plan for the actual repair. A bad vendor uses the 2 AM call as leverage to sell you something you didn’t need.

They give you notice when things are changing. Retirement, rate changes, ownership transitions, new scheduling processes — they tell you before you’d have to discover it the hard way.

Their invoices are legible. You can read them. You know what you’re paying for. You can present them to the board without translation.

These criteria aren’t fussy. They’re what the difference between “we have a plumber” and “we have a real vendor relationship” actually feels like.

The selection process

For a Tier 1 vendor you don’t have yet, here’s a workable process:

Step 1: Ask three neighboring buildings. Not the internet. Ask three self-managed buildings within a 15-minute radius who they use, and specifically what they like and dislike. Two buildings recommending the same vendor is a strong signal.

Step 2: Ask them to do one small job. Not the big thing you’re worried about. Something small and specific — replace a hallway faucet, service one unit’s radiator, whatever’s on the near-term list. Watch how they show up.

Step 3: Watch three things during the visit. Do they arrive within the window they promised? Do they explain what they’re doing while they do it? Do they leave the work area cleaner than they found it? Any of these being no is a signal.

Step 4: Read the invoice. Is it itemized? Does it match what you saw them do? Is the rate what they quoted? Any surprises in the invoice are a real signal about the relationship’s future.

Step 5: If the first job goes well, book a slightly bigger one. Something that requires them to remember what they did last time. Now you’re testing continuity.

Step 6: If that goes well, they’re your vendor. Log every subsequent visit — date, what they did, what they charged, how they were. Build the record. A vendor who has 20 clean visits logged is a vendor you trust.

Total elapsed time: 60 to 90 days. It’s slower than “call whoever Google returns first,” and the difference over 10 years is five figures.

The vendor Rolodex as an asset

Every vendor visit is an opportunity to add to the building’s memory. Small buildings that treat vendors as one-time transactions accumulate no memory. Buildings that treat vendors as long-term relationships accumulate a real record: this vendor did this work on this equipment on this date and charged this much.

Over time, the Rolodex answers questions that would otherwise require a fresh conversation:

• “Have we had this problem before?” — Search the vendor’s page for the equipment name.
• “Is this rate reasonable?” — Compare to the last five invoices from the same vendor.
• “Who did the roof last time?” — Vendor’s page shows the project entries.
• “Is this vendor still in business?” — When was the last visit? When was the last invoice? When was the last phone contact?

The vendor Rolodex also enables succession. When the current president leaves, the incoming board doesn’t inherit “the guy” — they inherit a page with the phone number, the last five visits, and the notes. The relationship is with the building, not with the outgoing president.

What to log about each vendor

The minimum useful vendor record:

• Business name and legal entity (matters when contracts are signed).
• Trade / kind (plumber / electrician / HVAC).
• Primary contact name and phone.
• After-hours contact if different.
• Rate structure (hourly, flat, minimum call-out).
• Insurance certificate on file, expiry.
• Notes on preferences, quirks, past issues.

Then per-visit:

• Date.
• What they did (in one sentence).
• What equipment they touched.
• What they charged.
• Any observations they made about follow-up work.
• The invoice as an attachment.

That’s it. Fifteen fields per vendor, five per visit. The compound effect over five years is a Rolodex that’s genuinely valuable.

The switching moment

Sooner or later, every Tier 1 vendor relationship will end. The plumber retires. The elevator company is bought by a larger franchise and the service quality changes. The electrician moves to residential-only work.

The board that has a real Rolodex handles this well. They pull the last two years of visits from the vendor’s page, calculate the annual spend and the frequency, and use that data to negotiate with the replacement. They also carry the record of “what work was done” into the next vendor relationship, so the new plumber isn’t starting from scratch.

The board that has no record starts from scratch every time. And starts from scratch every board turnover.

Where BuildingHQ fits

Vendors are a first-class surface in the product. Every vendor has a page. Every log entry can be linked to a vendor, so the vendor’s page becomes the natural view of every visit they’ve made and every entry that mentions them. Vendor-linked entries include the equipment touched and any attachments, so a five-year Rolodex is a scroll, not a search.

Vendor records travel with the building. When you switch management companies, or when the president rolls off, the vendor relationships stay with the building’s account. That’s what “institutional asset” means in practice.

If your board’s vendor list currently lives on a business card in someone’s wallet, start free and add the five vendors you use most. The Rolodex you build over the next six months is the version the next board will inherit.