Have A House Project? Let Pros Do It For You

Sharon Fisher was hard-pressed to figure out how she could get top dollar for the tired home of an elderly widow.

"There were a lot of little things wrong with the house -- and her children were out of state and weren't able to help her," recalled Fisher, a real estate agent for Coldwell Banker in Burlington County.

Fisher turned to Maintenance Made Simple, the latest entry in the growing market of home-repair franchises. For $85 an hour, a licensed subcontractor from the company replaced a cracked basement window, cleared an overgrown yard, fixed a chain-link fence and painted weary walls.

"It took a day and made an incredible difference in improving the property," Fisher said.

Stephen Sellers, who owns the Maintenance Made Simple franchise with builder Thomas Schurr, enters a field with players such as House Doctors, Andy OnCall and Rent-A-Husband. There are at least 12 home-repair franchises nationwide, more than half founded since 2002, according to Entrepreneur magazine.

But with home ownership at a record 70 percent, Sellers figures there's plenty of demand from time-starved professionals and senior citizens who need help maintaining their properties.

"People are always looking for someone to do the little jobs," Sellers said. "We're here to make that a pleasant, secure experience." His franchise serves most of Burlington County. Maintenance Made Simple differentiates itself by making firm appointments to start a job rather than a window of several hours.

Payment is based on hourly service, with a discount for purchasing blocks of time in advance; packages of 10 hours or more are sold at $75 an hour.

"We have people buying time for their parents to use whenever they need it," he said. "Realtors can give time to buyers at closing to use on the property however they wish." The franchise works with licensed and insured contractors who perform jobs ranging from drywall installation to roof repairs. The smallest job since the business debuted in December was replacing a bad wire in a gas fireplace.

"We're a services broker," Sellers said. "We network trade." Maintenance Made Simple takes care of the estimating and billing. Contractors use an online system to let the dispatcher know which hours they are available to work each week.

"We do the paperwork contractors hate to do," Sellers said. "And if one of our people is working on a bigger job for himself, he just takes himself off the schedule until it's done." An Air Force veteran, Sellers, 41, was a pilot for United Airlines who saw his career take a nosedive along with the fortunes of his employer.

"I lost my pension, took a 60 percent pay cut and had to spend 20 percent more time away from home," he said. "It was clear I had to find another way to make a living." Sellers had done construction work in college and recognized there was a shortage of businesses handling small jobs from conversations with Schurr, a friend at Eastern Bible Church in Hainesport.

"Tom builds houses and was frustrated because he couldn't pull people off home projects to help all the people who were asking him to fix gutters and hang ceiling fans," he said.

Sellers took out a second mortgage on his home in Lumberton to finance the business. He still flies in the Reserves at McGuire Air Force Base.

Like Sellers, Bruce Buckwald of Lumberton is a handy guy. He can repair drywall and do minor electrical work.

But Buckwald called Maintenance Made Simple to install programmable thermostats on his two-zone heating system, a task too complicated for him to handle.

"I'd been trying to get someone to do the job for two years," he said. "The guy they sent not only did the work, he cleaned up after."

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