How to decide whether to use a General contractor or hire your own sub contractors?

[Sean Beyrouthy]

Hello all! I am an investor in Delaware county, Pennsylvania. I have acquired my first two rental properties over the last couple months and have been rehabbing them myself. I am looking to take the next step towards real estate investing which to me is buying real estate and being hands off during the rehab process. Does anyone have any advice on whether I should hire a general contractor to just run the whole rehab, or should I hire the individual sub contractors myself to still have some more oversight. I've heard hiring sub contractors individually can save money as well. Also, can anyone provide me with a scope of work template I can use to give to a contractor so they can bid the job accordingly? Thank you!

[Chris Seveney]

@Sean Beyrouthy

If you cannot be at the project every day then don’t do it yourself

Also if you have never done it before and do not know how to write and coordinate contracts then again I recommend against it.

[Eliott Elias]

Running your own crew is a full time job, you will not be hands off what so ever. 

[Taylor Dasch]

General contractor is the way to go, but if you look up general contractor on google and go with one of those, it is going to be very expensive. I have sub contractors for each different trade and will get them scheduled when I do a rehab. I havent found that I had to be there every day, I just leave a lockbox and they can get in when they need. They will leave it unfinished which is why it is best to hold partial payment until the job is completely finished. 

[Jill F.]

We save a lot of money by hiring trades directly and a few subscontractors that quote jobs and some small one-man-shop business BUT my husband is a skilled carpenter and is working at one of our jobs every day. I work full time managing our (53) apartments and our (currently) 7 renovation projects underway. If you are managing your own renovations and hiring trades directly you will be working A Lot. It is a much bigger job than I ever imagined to just make all the design decisions and get all the materials purchased and on site in a timely manner and to get trades people scheduled in the right order.  Then to find replacements when some fail to show, and to make sure work is completed in a quality manner. In apartments, it's especially difficult to find subs that are truly quality oriented. Most of the best subs are working full time for builders doing new construction. We have to work really hard to find qualified trades people that care about doing a quality job that don't want to work full time for a builder which means being a lot more flexible with scheduling and paying decently and paying on time. The best deal is to find qualified trades people that want to work by the hour where we assume the risk for mistakes but you have to keep people busy enough to meet their needs.

[Jimmy Lynn]

Hey Sean! Great question and also some solid comments. I would say if you have the time and experience to run a project, then go for it, but I would lean towards doing what you're best at and leveraging a GC to free you up from the rehab.