Commercial landscaping price increase at renewal: choose the properties, the date and the reason from the season’s crew-hours

Step one: choose the properties from this season’s crew-hours

Raising every account by the same percentage is the fastest way to send letters and the hardest way to defend them. Some properties have drifted far from their bid; some were bid last year and still fit. Build one row per property from three exports: timeclock or payroll hours for the season, the bid sheet the current price came from, and the invoice history.

• The monthly fee and the month it last changed, from the invoices, not the contract.
• The crew-hours the bid assumed: the production-rate hours per visit times the visits in the specs, plus the slow-season visits.
• The crew-hours paid on that property this season, from timeclock entries coded to the property. Hours booked to a crew or a day instead of a property are themselves a finding.
• Drive time between properties on its own line, not spread blind across the route.
• A loaded hourly cost from the company’s own payroll register: wages plus payroll taxes, workers’ comp and benefits. Across all private employers, BLS found wages were 70.0% of compensation in June 2026 and benefits 30.0% — not a landscaping figure, only a reminder that a wage rate understates an hour’s cost.
• Work done in the season with no price on it: storm cleanup, irrigation repairs found on a mow day, the extra bed a resident asked for.

Illustrative example: an HOA pays $4,000 a month, $48,000 a year. The bid assumed 20 crew-hours a week for 40 mowing weeks and 8 a week for the other 12, about 900 hours. This season the timeclock entries coded to that property add up to about 1,150. At an illustrative loaded cost of $32 an hour, the bid’s labor was $28,800 and the season’s is $36,800: $8,000 more, before materials, on a fee that never moved. Revenue per crew-hour fell from about $53 to about $42. Those numbers are invented for the example; ranking the company’s own five largest properties by revenue per crew-hour is the comparison that counts, because the company’s own trend is the only benchmark that matters.

Separate the rate from the hours

The example holds two different problems, and they need two different conversations. The rate moved because wages moved: the labor market, the crew’s raises, a state wage floor. That is a price question, and a renewal letter can carry it. The hours moved because the property or the work changed: the board added beds at the entrance, residents ask the crew for extras on every visit, a slope that the bid assumed a mower could cut now takes a string trimmer. That is a scope question, and it belongs in a walk of the property and a revised spec, not inside a bigger percentage.

A landscaper in a 2024 forum thread about condo residents asking crews for extra work described the shortcut the trade already uses on hard accounts: “We tend to bid high on them bad ones.” The row per property is the formal version of that instinct: it shows which part of the gap is price, which is scope, and which is extra work that should have been billed when it was done.

Step two: choose the date from the board’s budget calendar

An increase that arrives after the budget is adopted asks the property manager to find money that has already been allocated. For community associations, the budget is a legal document with its own calendar. Florida’s statute for homeowners’ associations says that “the association shall prepare an annual budget that sets out the annual operating expenses” (section 720.303(6)). It sets no single month; the association’s fiscal year does. Other states have their own rules, and the governing documents of each association decide the rest.

So the calendar is per account. Ask each property manager for the fiscal year end, the month the board reviews the draft budget and the month it adopts it, or read them from the meeting minutes. In Florida HOAs, notices of board meetings “must specifically identify agenda items” and be posted at least 48 hours ahead, which makes it possible to check whether the renewal is actually on the agenda. For an office, retail or industrial property, the owner’s budget cycle sets the date, and the manager may be passing landscaping costs through to tenants under their leases, which is one more reason to ask early.

• The contract’s term, renewal and notice terms, and any termination-for-convenience clause, read from the signed copy
• Each account’s fiscal year end and budget-meeting month, asked for directly
• The date the renewal and the season’s numbers must reach the manager: work back from the budget meeting, not forward from the anniversary
• The next wage-floor date in the state, from the state agency’s own page

Whether a price can change mid-term, and what notice a given contract requires, are questions for the company’s attorney. This guide quotes the statute and interprets none of it.

Step three: a reason the property manager can check

The strongest reason is the one closest to the property. The Florida Department of Commerce states that “Effective September 30, 2026, the Florida minimum wage will be $15.00 per hour,” a rate that runs to December 31, 2027. If the crew on a property earned $14 before that date and earns $15 now, the letter can say so, with the date and the state page behind it. The U.S. Department of Labor’s state table, updated July 1, 2026, still listed Florida at $14.00, the rate before the step, so quote the state’s own page. The same table lists California at $16.90, Washington at $17.13, Arizona at $15.15, Colorado at $15.16 and Illinois at $15.00, and says Michigan’s rate is scheduled to rise to $15.00 on January 1, 2027.

Do not borrow a wage reason that is not true for the crew. BLS reports a median wage for grounds maintenance workers of $19.27 an hour in May 2025, which means half earned more than that; a crew already well above a new state floor gets no honest reason from it, and the property manager will ask. On those properties the reason is the hours: the season’s count against the bid, and the scope that grew. Which wage rate applies to which employee is a question for the payroll provider or an employment attorney.

The commercial landscaping renewal letter

Keep it to one page and send it after a walk of the property or a call, never instead of one. Sample, to adapt and have reviewed: “Dear [name], under our landscape maintenance agreement for [property] dated [date], the monthly price for the [year] contract year will be $[new], up from $[current], starting [date]. Florida’s minimum wage rose to $15.00 an hour on September 30, 2026, and the wages on the crew that maintains [property] rose with it. The scope, the visit schedule and the crew stay the same. If the new price does not fit the budget the board adopts on [date], we can price a reduced scope instead, such as fewer color rotations or mulch every other year. [Name, title, phone].”

• The property name and the agreement date, so it cannot be confused with another account
• The current and the new monthly price in dollars, not only a percentage
• One paragraph of reason specific to the property, with its public source where there is one
• An alternative that is not a rebid: a reduced scope, a different mowing frequency in the slow months, or a phased enhancement

When the answer is “we will put it out to bid”

Know each property’s floor before the meeting: the monthly price at which it covers its crew-hours at the loaded cost, its share of drive time, materials and supervision, and still contributes something. Step one already built most of that number. Above the floor there is room to talk; below it, the property costs the company money at the current price, and losing it in a rebid is not the loss it feels like.

A rebid is work for the board too, and saying so calmly, with the season’s hours in hand, is not a threat. Record each outcome — accepted, accepted with a scope change, rebid and kept, rebid and lost — so next year’s renewals start from what happened, not from memory.

When this does not need outside help

A company with a handful of properties, an owner who knows each crew’s hours and contracts that carry an annual adjustment the office applies on schedule does not need anyone to run this. Three exports and an afternoon are enough, and if every property already earns its bid, the right letter may be no letter.

An outside review earns its fee when renewal pricing is one leak among several and the records do not connect: hours coded to crews instead of properties, extras done on site and never billed, enhancement proposals with no outcome, invoices waiting out the season. Our Revenue Review takes two weeks. It works from read-only access to the company’s timeclock or payroll export, bid sheets, contracts and invoices, and sets out, property by property, the season’s hours against the fee as a dollar figure where the records support one. It writes no letters, contacts no client, walks no property and gives no wage-law or legal advice; every pricing decision stays with the owner. Nobody here runs a landscaping company, and there are no client case studies on this site yet. For what a landscaping business consultant engagement with us covers, and what it leaves out, see the commercial landscaping page.

If it is unclear whether any of this is worth a fee, start with a free 20-minute call, where a company too small for the arithmetic is told so.