How to Find a Contractor for Your Fix and Flip
If you are planning to do a major remodel for a fix and flip you don’t want to get started on it alone. Finding a contractor allows you to think more about the design aspect, while your contractor will make sure things get done in a safe and timely manner (and hopefully with little to no mistake). Before you hire the first person you talk to here are a few tips to finding a contractor you can trust.
Are you looking for a general contractor or a sub-contractor?
This question will help you determine what you need exactly, and it relies on your qualifications, experience, and how involved you plan to be with the remodel. If you’re planning to do purely cosmetic work such as new flooring and paint, you might not even need to think about hiring a contractor and can complete the work on your own, but if you’re looking at a larger amount of work, you’ll need to look for a contractor. Items such as plumbing and roofing can be done with a subcontractor such as a, you guessed it, plumber or roofer, if you need to look at the structure or foundation of a property you will be looking for a general contractor.
Due Diligence
We can’t stress it enough. Whether you are buying an investment property or looking for a contractor the due diligence that you perform will help make your real estate investment much easier on you and your wallet. If you already work with a contractor and they always do a great job you probably don’t need to look much further and just keep working with them, but if you need someone new talk to colleagues and get some referrals to look into.
Don’t know where to find referrals and don’t want to ask someone for one, you can always use sites like Houzz, Thumbtack, and Angie’s List to search for contractors by what kind of job you need and see verified customer reviews, meaning the reviews you see are from actual customers. See if the contractor you are looking at has examples of before and after projects that they’ve worked on so that you will have an idea of what to expect.
The last thing on your due diligence list before you call is to check if they are a licensed contractor. You can verify this by looking at the registrar of contractors for your state. Arizona’s registrar of contractors includes contractors from all over Arizona and you’ll be able to see if the contractor’s license is current and up to date, if they need to update their license, or if they had their license suspended for any suspicious activity such as fraud. Can’t find the contractor? Ask them for their license number, if that number doesn’t exist within the registrar of contractors then you need to look for a different contractor.
Bids
Once you’ve selected a few options for a contractor or subcontractor for your investment property it is now time to interview and shop around your options. You want to make sure that you are paying for
both a good price, but also good quality. You might not find the best work for the lowest price, but going for the most expensive option can mean a lower return on investment for you. See what each contractor is suggesting and the pricing for each budgeted item as well as the cost of labor.
Always compare and contrast the contractors you are looking at and see if they are suspiciously low on their pricing or way too high and find out what works best for you.
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