Experience with Los Angeles general contractors?

[George Griffeth]

I read a recent post on real estate agents in the Los Angeles area being generally rude. I know that's a massive pool of people to generalize, but it seemed like a few people were agreeing. This brought to mind the question, is it a similar experience with general contractors? What has your experience working with general contractors and sub contractors been in the Los Angeles area with regards to them being rude? More common than in other areas? What do you think is the cause of this? Is it a reflection of the LA culture, or could it be because times are good now and it's being taken for granted? I saw someone mention there's a low barrier of entry for real estate agents in Los Angeles, is this the same case for general contractors?

I'm very curious to hear even a small slice of perspective from seasoned professionals such as are on these forums. Thanks for anyone that takes time to share their knowledge and wisdom.

[Nabil Suleiman]

@George Griffeth

Hi George, I for one can say that with any field there will be people that provide terrible experiences, and within that we create the hasty generalization that the entire industry is made up of like minded individuals. You can apply this to many aspects of real estate. You can find people on here who have met great agents, and terrible ones. Contractors that walk off jobs, ones that take a really really long time but do beautiful work, and other where they have a full team of people that kill the project and (maybe) your budget. A lot of comes down to either working with people that have been referred to you and you having knowledge that someone you trust has had a positive experience with them, or doing your due diligence on the contractors portfolio, asking them for multiple references you can call and making your judgement from there. I for one am a big fan of the culture of LA, but because of our density you will run into all different types of personalities, work ethics and sheer desire to either help people succeed or help themselves succeed. It someone times feels like you might have to work through a lot of that density to find the good ones, but they are out there.