Choosing the Right Contractor

Many of our family members, friends and clients reside in Texas. As some of you may have heard, some crazy weather happened recently causing many homeowners to incur costly weather-related damages to their homes. Insurance companies have been involved, checks are being cut and now the home/business owners need to get the problems fixed.  As spring and summer temperatures kick in, and they will with a vengeance, issues will start to arise - smells will develop, mold will grow and problems caused by burst pipes that may have been “patched for now” will only get worse.

So, you have to go hire a contractor and/or subcontractor to make repairs on your home or business. How do you know who to trust? What’s the best price? How many people do you reach out to? Is the “we can just do it ourselves” approach realistic? No, the last one is not. Leave it to the experts, please.

Let’s start by looking at two old adages:

-          ‘You get what you pay for’- if you buy Walmart, you get Walmart quality. If you buy Target, you get to snub your nose at the Walmart folks…oh and you probably get a bit better quality. If you buy Macy’s, then you get to be one of the next Real Housewives. j/k

-             ‘Good, fast or cheap, pick two’ - very rarely can you have all three, so pick two of those.

So, what to do???

There is an idea that you should get three quotes and toss out the lowest one and the highest one...bad idea. The lowest one doesn’t always mean lowest quality. It could very well mean that they actually took the time to properly price out the job. If the lowest price contractor can provide legit positive references over the course of more than a couple years, and a google search doesn’t show negative reviews or recent moves/name changes - they may be a viable solution. As long as they are not too low. By too low, I mean if the next two numbers are more than 10 percent higher than the low bidder, you need to make sure they covered all the scope items. And get everything in writing. Long gone are the handshake deals.

The middle contractor may be good as well but less experienced. And the high bidder may be higher priced but has the longest time in business and has hundreds of good reviews. They may charge the most because they know the true costs and wont change order you to death on a job.

What we recommend is not choosing price. Price gets you in trouble and price can skew your perspective in a negative way. We recommend choosing first the ‘good’ or rather the quality with good references. Then we suggest you move on to availability- when can they do the work, can they staff it with actual skilled trades, etc. Finally, price should be considered.

To sum up

Choosing the right contractor should start with a focus on quality, then availability and experience and then price. Most people choose to do it in the reverse order and it usually bites them in the butt. You may not notice it at first - after all paint hides a lot. The emotion of being done with it all allows things to forgiven that shouldn’t be. Eventually though, the lower quality will come through, in trim that falls off, tile that breaks, a light that flickers when you turn the microwave on. Food for thought.