Minimum Wage - Resident Caretakers

Since May 1st of 2011, BC's minimum wage has been increased every 6 months, with the final increase coming into effect on May 1st of this year. What does this mean to you as a landlord? If you own a building that has a 9 or more suites and have a resident manager or caretaker, their wage will need to be increased if you haven't already raised it.

The final increase on May 1st brought the minimum wage for managers/caretakers of buildings with 9 to 60 suites to $615 plus $24.65 per suite. If your building has more than 60 suites, the minimum salary is now $2,094.84.

Remember these amounts are the minimum; they are not necessarily what you should pay your on-site staff. Good managers and caretakers can be difficult to find - and minimum wage may not be the best way to attract the good ones. 

-- Carly Ludwar and Hunter Boucher

Short Cuts?

Landlords, like everyone else, are on the look out for the most efficient way to deal with their affairs. And in a perfect world, all of our shortcuts would lead directly to our destination. However, we don’t live in a perfect world, so sometimes it is necessary to do extra work to avoid what could turn into a disaster.

When renting out a building - usually a house or multiplex - that has more than one unit where utilities are not included, it would seem efficient to have one of the tenants put the utilities in their own name, and have them collect a share from the other tenants in the building. This would mean you would only have to deal with collecting the rent and no other money each month. This sounds great, but it opens you up for many other issues.

One potential disaster is that the utilities do not get paid by the tenant who is responsible for them, though the other tenants have been paying their share to the tenant who should be paying the bill. The end result is the utilities being cut off - and the tenants who paid their bills on time coming after you.

Or the opposite; the tenant who is responsible for utilities pays the full bill, but the other tenants decide that they’d rather not pay. Again, the tenant who paid the full amount of the utilities - or could only pay part of them seeing as s/he didn’t have enough money - will be looking to you to fix the issue.

The warning to heed? Unless the utilities are billed for one specific unit only, do not require any of your tenants to have the utility bills in their own name.

-- Hunter Boucher and Carly Ludwar