Would a shared, searchable contractor track record database be useful?
Hi all. First time landlord here, about to buy my first rental in the Twin Cities. I posted elsewhere on BP asking how people find contractors, and the near universal answer was referrals from other contractors, agents, or PMs, tested with a small paid job first, then tracked over years until you’ve got a reliable bench per trade.
That got me thinking about a concept and I wanted to sanity check it here.
To be clear on what this isn’t: not another Angi or HomeAdvisor (they sell the same lead to several contractors regardless of fit, which is a big reason they don’t solve this). Not Yelp either (open to anyone, no way to know if the reviewer was even a landlord, no data on what actually matters for rental work, like response time, quote accuracy, or reliability with tenant occupied units).
What I’m picturing is closer to the structured knowledge experienced investors build up over years, made shared and searchable instead of stuck in each person’s head.
Two questions:
1. Does something like this exist that I'm missing? I checked BP's own contractor page, local REIA directories, and general contractor sites, and none seem to do this, but I could be missing something regional.
2. If it doesn’t exist, would you actually use or contribute to it, or does the informal network work fine as is?
Honest feedback welcome, including “bad idea.”