If you were given the responsibility to find the right contractor to renovate a building or a premise…..?

How would you go about getting it started ?

I would check every source I could find. There is the Better Business Bureau. See if any disputes have been reported. There is a professional organization for the contractors themselves and they police the industry. They may have him on record. I would search legal records to see if I could find if there were lawsuits pending. I would ask the contractor for recent references. He will undoubtedly give you ones that he thinks are good but go and chat with those people anyway. They will give you an idea of how organized the project was. Most of the crooks (and the are legion in this industry) are sloppy and disorganized. Understand that they ALL speak the same language. It’s called lying. It’s easy to tell when a contractor is lying. His lips are moving.

You can go to the municipal department who do the on-site inspections. They can tell you plenty. There are probably more sources than these few. When I had our rebuilding done, I did NONE of these. Reason: we had a ‘friend’ do it. He took us via fraud for over $100,000 (out of pocket). We found because of state laws that he is not prosecutable. Had we done even one of the things listed above, we would have found out how disreputable he is. He is continuing to swindle people as we speak.

The contract we signed was air tight. It specified almost nothing in concrete terms. There were no dates for completion of the various types of tasks (the roof, carpentry, floors, sheet rock, painting, etc.). But not having anything to worry about, we didn’t read it too closely. Don’t sign the contract until you are clear on what it says and are comfortable with the terms. Make sure it is specified when payments are to be made and how much will be paid in that installment. Do not pay him for the completed job before he has completed it. If you do, this is called saying Good Bye in the industry.

Sure we were trusting and foolish but after all this was a friend. And we are trusting, naive people. We learned an expensive lesson. Oh, it may come out well for us. We have recently learned that he has cancer. Prayer does work.

Beware of everybody and good luck. You will have to stay on top of things.

Finding the Right Contractor

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