Hiring Contractors To Repair Your House! Hiring contractors and handymen can be a dreadful process, when you decide to repair your house, you need to look for certain qualities and qualifications. Hiring the wrong person could cause you a lot of time and money specially now more than ever! with the prices of materials and labor is sky rocket. Hiring the wrong person can lead in some cases to a financial crisis, specially if the renovations are major. In this article I want to walk you through some of the things you shouldn’t do when hiring someone to repair your house. These are real lessons based on real situations I have dealt with before, this way you will be able to identify who’s your to go guy when hiring for a specific job.
Let’s start with where to find the right people. Now your house in bad condition and needs a lot of repairs you start calling people you found on Google, In busy times like right now, you will find that some won’t answer the phones, and the ones who do answer the phone, because most of them are busy and the rule of supply and demand will be applied when it comes to pricing.
It’s good to be decisive but in some cases it’s better to be patient when you decide to hire someone to repair your house in Pensacola. Sometimes we just need to get the job done and get it over with, but it’s better to wait when and go through a few and then you sift through them to see which one is best to do the job like the way it should be done with a reasonable price.
Let’s start with the things you shouldn’t do when hiring a contractor to repair your house in Pensacola.
What’s not to do when hiring a contractor to repair your house in Pensacola
1- Never pay in advance before the job they assign to is done.
Now some contractors and handymen will ask for half upfront and the other half when the job is done. In that case the contractor want to guarantee that he’s getting some money for him not to lose money on the job he assigned for. But what guarantee do you have as a homeowner for him to even start on the job and not run away? In the case of a homeowner doesn’t pay a contractor, the contractor can put lien on the house until that payment is paid and the lien is fully satisfied. There’s another reason that’s Some will want to not come out of pocket to pay their employees and want the homeowner indirectly to pay for the labor. But if the contractor decided to run away with the down payment and he went out of state some where it will be your loss! BUT BEAWARE OF PAYING ANYONE A FULL PAYMENT IN ADVANCE BEFORE THEY FINISH THE JOB. Some people became victim of that. I know a lot of stories from homeowners who paid people in advance and the unethical contractor took the money and never looked back. And since I’m the homeowner allied I would say never pay anyone in advance for a down payment unless if the company is well known and this is their protocol. But again never pay a full payment to anyone before they finish the job. If someone asked for the full payment in advance, I advice you not to do business with that person.
2- Don’t turn a round and not look back.
It doesn’t mean that you hired someone to do the job or to start on the project that the job will be done to your expectations. For every project there’s has to be a project manager who manages every step of the project progress. I promise you, you will regret if you rely on them without managing the progress every step of the way, where you can catch mistakes early on rather than things get accumulated to a pile of disaster. Where at first you thought the contractor will turn your place from zero to hero you come to the reality that the same person turned out to be the master of disaster. Leaving alone to hire someone else to fix their mess.
3- Don’t hire one person to master all jobs even if they claim that.
I came across a lot of contractors and handymen. Some will claim they know everything and they’re a master of all trades. No one is a master of everything. You might find someone who’s a great framer but he’s bad at tiling, you could hire the best electrician on the planet, but he’s bad at plumbing. I have seen people good at one or two trades but I haven’t seen a single person who’s good at everything. Some will claim they can do everything to get the job which is nothing wrong with that, but as long as they perfect every single job to how it should look like as if it was done by someone who’s specialized in that trade.
4- Word of mouth estimate and nothing on paper.
Because there’s a lot of work needs to be done for a big project, it’s better to have the contractor write an estimate in details what’s the work he’s going to perform. Someone who generalize his estimate without written estimate in details will lead things to get tangled down the road, specially if who you hired was unethical and running short on work ethic. The right way is for you to receive from the person you hired what’s each job he’s going to do and a price tag next to it. Professionalism shouldn’t be mentioned to the people you hire for them to perform it, the right ones will perform it first then you will complement it.
5- Don’t go with the first estimate.
Have you ever bought something in a store or online then you found it cheaper some where else? Well, We all have. The same thing will apply when it comes to hiring someone, make sure you have a few estimates in hand, you will find that some estimates are way off up to 2 or 3 times more than other estimates. Not only that, when you have more options, you have more control of what the outcome will be, but when you have one option, the outcome will be in the hand of the person you hired, and since the contractor/handyman is working on your house, let’s keep the control in your hand.
Summery.
I like to mention that the work the contractors do is hard and I like and respect the skills, and there’s a lot of good contractors and handymen out there, but there’s also a lot of people got scammed by some and we want to make sure that doesn’t happed to you. We stand with homeowners to protect their interest and make sure no one pay more than what they should. In times where the market is hot and a lot of real estate developments everywhere some ran short on customer service, but some still strong and doing the best they can to meet homeowners need. Good and bad employees are in every industry and I’m sure there’s way more good than bad. We have a great people working in the construction field here and we like to see more.
It’s important to have a good business reputation. Reputation is very important to any business, and how the name of the business reflects on people when they hear it, it’s how the business will continue to thrive even when times are bad or economy is slow. The prosperity of your business is the impact that leaves in the community where it’s at. At Quality properties of Northwest Florida LLC, we thrive and grow our business by helping homeowners who want to sell their homes fast despite the situation or the condition of the house. We provide our best possible cash offer to homeowners to help them through tough times. What our company do is real estate investment company but we’re in the people business. Homeowners satisfaction is our goal and we do whatever it takes to reach that goal.
