My friend Mike is a self employed contractor in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. He does work for Berkshire Hathaway realty which manages other landlords properties. The agent will solicit a bid from Mike, present it to the landlord , and they approve it. Then Mike buys the material and completes the work. Then he submits a bill to the realty. They process the bill nice and slow. Then send it to the landlord. Who then drags feet sometimes weeks or months to pay the rela estate the money Mike is owed. The realty company then sits on the money and makes Mike wait til they feel like paying him. One example he waited 6 months to get a 4000 dollar payment. They do this to all the contractors. And my guess is they're crying favor with the landlords by setting this up to basically be a situation where they use the contractor to finance the renovations for the landlord. And beyond that, the realty is probably using the money the landlord paid the realty that belongs to Mike, to pay their own realty company bills... and then when some extra money comes along to the realty company, and it's convenient to pay Mike , they send out funds... randomly whenever. They refuse to hurry the process or so anything to make timely payment after the work is done.