Finding Investor Friendly Contractors

[Nikolas Goff]

Hi everyone, I was curious to find out how people in the San Antonio area find their investor friendly contractor? I've been having trouble with contractors charging way too much! Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Jonatan Barbera]

@Nikolas Goff Having been a contractor most of my life and a full-time real estate investor for the past 7 years I can tell you there's no such thing as an "investor friendly" contractor. That's a term used by gurus to sell their crap. Renovating a house is not a part-time or a hands-off process. Someone always needs to be on top on of it.

You need to find individual laborers. Like, floor guy, cabinet guy, sheet rocker, etc. This helps minimize mistakes. It also gives you a chance to really break down the cost of things. Also, it's always better if you source your own materials. This saves you a ton of money because you have some contractors that like buying from a certain place which doesn't always mean cheaper. Now, you have to do a lot of babysitting. You need to give everyone a very detailed scope of work (all the way down to the light caps) because change order is how a lot of them make their money. They'll give you a very nice low bid for the "whole job" and then charge you to do the baseboards because they "never thought" you wanted new baseboards after they ripped the old ones out!

This is not to talk bad about contractors this is to help you work with them better until you find the team you like using. 

If you ever want this process hands-off hire a project manager. In case you're wondering no, a project manager on your payroll is not the same as a GC. The Project manager works for YOU.

If you have any questions feel free to reach out.