Rental Property Investor · Los Angeles, CA · Member since 2018 · 77 posts · 22 votes
Hi,
I am looking to start doing some rehabs and I wanted to get some info from members who are already doing this.
I have limited construction / rehab experience and I'm wondering If I should be hiring a General Contractor to do the work or finding each individual person myself and acting as the GC.
How do some of you handle getting the work done? (if you're not doing it yourself)
I would imagine it's cheaper to NOT have to hire a GC, right?
Contractor · Oxford, MA · Member since 2018 · 807 posts · 745 votes
8y
You will definitely save money, or think you did, by not hiring a GC. You will however lose time (making carrying costs go up) and get taken advantage of if you don't find honest sub contractors at every phase. If you don't know what you're doing with construction, it isn't worth the risk IMO. Hire a GC for the first few until you know what you're doing, then you can run the subs yourself if you want. Also keep in mind that a good GC has a connection of sub contractors that they trust, so it saves you time getting multiple bids for everything and hoping you picked the right ones. A lot of the time they cut the GC a discount too, so it might even be the same price to have a GC without even counting in being taken advantage of and the added carrying costs. Just make sure you get a good GC, do a lot of homework on them and don't hire one until you are 100% comfortable with them and you would be willing to hand them a blank check. Any shady GC that is good at being a crook will make you feel 90%+ comfortable but there will be this little spidy sense that makes you feel something is off, trust that. Also make sure everything is always in writing and very detailed so there are no questions if anything ends up in a dispute.