Marcus Thibodeau — Marseille, France Landlord & Property Investor
I own four rental properties, and if there is one thing that will drain your profitability faster than anything else, it’s maintenance costs.
Plumbers, electricians, handymen — by the time you’ve paid for labor on a dozen small jobs across a year, you start questioning whether property investment is actually worth it. I was at that point two years ago, genuinely reconsidering everything.
A colleague mentioned Handy Home Men to me, mostly because of the founder’s background — a French specialist who’d spent decades mastering DIY.
Something about that felt credible to me in a way that random YouTube tutorials didn’t. I started with the guides on common plumbing repairs and honestly didn’t stop reading for about three hours.
My most significant win came from the guide on unclogging and maintaining a septic system. One of my properties — older house, outside the city — had been giving me recurring problems.
I’d had it professionally serviced twice in 18 months and the issue kept returning. The guide explained something my service technician had never bothered to: the root cause.
It wasn’t just buildup. The tank’s bacterial balance was completely off because a previous tenant had been using antibacterial cleaners that were destroying the natural breakdown process.
Remi’s guide on what to add to restore bacterial activity, combined with the maintenance schedule he outlined, solved a problem that two professional visits hadn’t touched. I’ve had zero issues with that property in 14 months now.
Since then I’ve used the site for flooring repairs, HVAC filter maintenance across all four properties, and most recently, the guide on improving exterior security lighting — which I implemented across all properties after one of my tenants raised safety concerns.
The ROI from what I’ve learned on Handy Home Men over the past two years probably runs into thousands of euros in labor costs I haven’t paid.
I tell every landlord I know: this is not a beginner’s website that happens to be accessible. It’s genuinely expert content written in a way that makes it accessible. Big difference.