How To Select a Contractor

A quick guide how to select a contractor for your construction needs:

Before reading the guideline, just take a breath and take it in - To do proper work, do cost real money and do require specific skills. There is a saying, claiming "Cheap buy, Expensive Sale" is proven so true being tried and tested. This article's goal is to give you advice on how to go about, to select a contractor; or builder, to excecute your project to the expected quality standards and giving you the customer service you deserve. 

I am sure you have heard the term "Bakkie Builder" and I assure you it has never been used with a positive notation nor intention. It refers to a company or someone, physically operating from a bakkie where quality and professionalism is of high concern, and the idea of them running away with your money feels like a reality.

I will try to work chronological so lets start right at the beginning. 

(1) Less is not more: You should obtain more than one quotation

from trusted sources, this could be from word-of-mouth recommendations (always best), google, social media or advertising attempts from the contractor. Once you find the contractors, trust your feeling, if it doesn’t feel right it probably isn't right, so why would you invite them over and introduce them to your private and personal space, creating potential risks? 

(2) Odds are that odds are even better:

So get 3 quotations- or worst case 5 quotations, this way you will most likely be able to compare incompetence with reality, at the same time apply price-check and identify outliners that cannot be used, as it makes no real sense. 

(3)If it's too good to be true, it probably is: We tend to try and save money, but reality is, if you want to save money- decide what you want to omit… maybe a bathroom without a bath is a saving, or buying good second hand windowsmay save you thousands, but honestly will you get the same end result by cutting R50'000 off your renovation budget? Or will thebuilder just make up the saving elsewhere? 

(4) Back to Basics: The basics are, that a legitimate company have an actual logo, website, facebook page, etc, and respectfully NOT a gmail address. Having all these do cost a lot of money, so chances are that these contractors do value client satisfaction. 

(5)Phone a friend: Chances are good you

know someone in the field so you MUST call them for an opinion, and if you can’t, then call the competitors and do some job-related fact checking to help you

(6) Don’t be afraid to Google: What does the every-day-man-google say about them? If there is nothing, it could mean they are not publicly known and dificult to find later….. If there are numerous "posts" it indicates they are very active and you will easily find them if need to. Just something to consider! So what do you do… you now have a few quotes and have done some research and still you don’t know which quote to accept. 

(7)Don’t play lotto: Well, I can tell you what most people do - they start
playing the game of gettting better rates elsewhere simply because they are stressed and see the opportunity to save a lot of money! Some, very few times, they won the lottery and struck luck by some miracle. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys. So true. Follow this post on facebook to see the results of what can happen if you play the quotes against each other! Just click on the FB icon>>>>

(8) But play dirty:

So figure out a challenge relating to your project, ask a trick question to your contractors, like do you have or can you suggest better alternative options to…. Or can one do in this situation... Do some reasearch on specifics and trick question them to evaluate their respondse, like "my research showd that … so what are your input on that?". Some people are smooth-talkers but being educated in your field is obvious. 

(9) Key personel: Find out who will be the key personell and "google" them to see what type of person they are and if you feel comfortble with the person who will manage your project…

(10) Call references: I know you are questioning this whole aricle just because my advice as last resort is to call references…. So I leave you with the question unanswered… WHY would one give you bad references as a contractor? And if one gives bad references, what do that actually say about the company. REST my case. Should you get a bad reference you should really end up confused, and seriously consider walking away. 

If in doubt call the EXPERTS!!!

       Feel free to call The Property Contractor for all your construction needs! 0747966083