Would a contractor come along for a walkthrough of a property?

Question

My wife and I have been looking for SFH for over a year now and have passed up a few simply because we’re inexperienced in estimating remodels.

I have made a conscious decision to get better at this, but wanted to know if contractors ever join potential buyers on a walkthrough of the property?

Is this something that they do? And how much might we pay for an hour of their expertise?

Ana Vergara · Answer

We actually did this once on a property we were considering. It actually looked a lot more intimidating than it actually was. So thought this was super helpful. We ended up paying $200. But it was worth it for the peace of mind.

Bruce Woodruff · Answer

I would say about $200 for an hour walk-around. Same as you would pay for a lawyer or financial consult....

Laurel Chauvin · Answer

Absolutely! Especially if you have a good relationship with the contractor.

Jonathan Klemm · Answer

Hey @Vitaliy Gnezdilov - Sadly we are here in Chicago so can't help you up in Saint Paul, but for your own insight we walk properties all the time for investors. We offer both a virtual and in-person site walkthrough to help investors get a baseline of construction and renovation costs.

Different from a lot of other GCs we charge for our walkthroughs and it has been one of the best decisions we made because it really helps vet clients and gets us into alignment.

Bruce Woodruff · Answer

I'd be careful with anything other than a quote from a real live Contractor who has seen the house in person. Sure, these tools can give a person some rough idea of costs, but I would never base my decision to buy/not buy on them.....

Mike Hasson · Answer

A good question and I commend your decision to learn how to estimate budgets. It will be invaluable in your investing journey. You'll get better with experience but here's a few suggestions to get you started.

A) The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs by J Scott. This book break down costs to labor, materials, finishing levels and more. It really is a great start as a baseline for estimating costs.

B) RepairPricer.com - If you have an inspection report, you can upload the report to this website and they will use AI to give price estimates for everything in the report, with impressive accuracy.

Even if you do hire a contractor, I still recommend to learn as much as you can, as not all contractors are the same, and there are multiple ways to do just about everything. Learning the language and the lingo, and having a solid understanding of EXACTLY what you want to accomplish will help you be successful.

For example, will your project be fine with off-the-shelf cabinets from home depot, or do you need a custom solution? The custom builder pricing and handyman pricing are going to be wildly different, so when you do call on contractors, just make sure you know what you're asking for, and are comparing apples to apples when price shopping.

Adam Tafel · Answer

If not at the showing you can definitely get them inside during the inspection period. We do this all the time and I've never once paid a contractor an hourly fee. Finding a contractor with the time is the tricky part.. you can also get pretty far shooting detailed video and taking measurements.

Carie Shaun · Answer

This is recommended. And as they say, the time spent should be well compensated. Good luck finding the right contractor.

Eliott Elias · Answer

Yes they do, the good ones want to get compensated for it.

Stephen Keighery · Answer

@Vitaliy Gnezdilov yes for sure but you are generally going to need to pay them for their time.

Would a contractor come along for a walkthrough of a property?

Would a contractor come along for a walkthrough of a property?

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