General Contractors refusing to quote without them buying materials

[Svetlana Kazantseva]

Hi all! We have a really hard time finding a general contractor for our repair project in a buy & hold SFH in Kansas City, MO. We hired a property manager after purchasing the house and both contractors they sent in are "skeptical about providing a quote if they cannot use their own materials". In their experience "it has lead to a lot of headaches and delays with the project". We are out of state investors and were going to stick to David Green's advise of getting quotes without the materials for fair comparison + being able to select the material we want, put it on our credit cards. Do you think it's reasonable for contractors to refuse a quote without materials? Should we keep looking?

[Bruce Woodruff]

As a long-time Contractor I would never bid on a job where the customer wanted to provide materials themselves. Nothing but headaches....and it's just plain rude. You want to buy the products, but I bet you won't be there to meet the trucks, inspect the materials, unload them or see to their security until they are installed. Right?

You expect the GC to do all that for you for free correct? And then when there is a mistake in the order (because the customer never knows what the H they're doing) then it's a big delay which gets blamed on guess who? Yep, the GC....

@Svetlana Kazantseva if you want to save money (or use your CCs), then it's only fair to pay the GC the money it is costing them to do this your way....I would offer them 20% to start and see what they say. But you will lose any good GCs and end up with the new, inexperienced, unlicensed guys...it just ain't worth it....