All Forum Posts by: Heather Bettis

@Matthew Wright

I agree with @Chris Eaker. Tennessee has a lot to offer. I don't have much to add as he covered it pretty well. I live in the Sweetwater, TN area not far from Knoxville and being originally from Pennsyvania, I love the beauty of the Mountains and the weather here and there is plenty of opportunity. We are currently waiting on the closing of our first property which was a foreclosure and will become our primary residence and business location.

I am so sorry you are having such an issue. If I were closer to Nashville I would offer to have my husband check it out for you but we are not close enough. It's really sad that people have no integrity sometimes. However I can tell you in TN a contractors license is required as well as the contractor carry a specific amount of insurance and workman's comp insurance. I am not in the office right now but in the morning I can send you the links where you can check if the license is active. You can also report them to the licensing board if license is not active and even if it is active they have violated the requirements of the written contract. TN requires certain clauses in the contract and one as simple as you described is not sufficient by law. I am sorry I can't tell your right now what those requirements are without looking but can find them for you in the morning. If you want privately send me the company name and owners name and I will see what I can find on them. Also be sure to report this to Home Advisor with a direct phone call to them so other customers don't have this problem. Always check license and insurance and get copies of those documents prior to starting. In TN we do have a clause in all counties except 8 that a handyman business such as my husband's business that does not require a contractors license as long as we don't do jobs over $3000 we don't need the license but we are still required the insurance. Please send me a connect and an email address as I can't do that from my phone and in the morning I will find and email you all the licensing requirement info and contact info for the correct authorities that you need for TN. 

Hello and Welcome @Chris Shelton,

My husband and I are in Sweetwater and are just starting out as well and are around the same age. Maybe would could meet up sometime and support each other along our journey. Knox REIA's monthly meeting is tonight and the topic is "Labor of Love - Rehabbing a house from start to finish". I know it's short notice, but Rick and I are going tonight, it's our first one if you would like to join us. I will send you a connect.

I am interested as well @Lee Marsteller.

Thank you @Matthew Bontrager I will definitely check out those links and search for the rest. Appreciate the information.

@Michelle B. Thanks for the information. I have not been to an auction yet, but at this point I was thinking I may not be able to compete at the auction plus they are so far behind on the auctions that the ones I am interested in may not be up for auction for a while yet.

Thank you @Aaron Anderson, your post has been very helpful. I have been looking into the license and it all seemed so confusing so I greatly appreciate the explanation and numbers in your post.

 Darrell have you implement the use of Access in this way? I too was thinking this might be a good way to go for lists, and would like to hear how it worked for you if you implemented it.

I agree with Chris, give them an estimate for the rehab work. They are simply paying you for the service of doing the rehab work, at least that would be my understanding of it. That should have nothing to do with their selling price or profit on the sale. 

Hi Everyone,

My husband owns a handyman business and in the last week we have gotten text messages (which are not uncommon for our customers), however the 3 texts I am referring to are scams and I just wanted to share with other contractors so that you are aware.

Each of the 3 texts started out asking about a specific service our company offers such as one was hardwood floor install, and the third pressure washing, don't remember what the second one was without looking.

The first one gave me a red flag when I asked where they found out about our company when they gave me a website our company is not listed on, but I played along to see where they were going with this. It ended up that they wanted new hardwood floors installed in the entire house and gave me the address to the home in Sweetwater, TN where we are located. I googled the address to find that it was a home listed for sale that had already been completely remodeled including new beautiful hardwood floors that you could see in the pictures. Then I got the "I'm out of town" and I need to pay with a credit card more than the cost so you can pay the previous owner to get the key. No thank you not interested.

The others were pretty close to the same although the third did get where he found our company listed right, but I didn't waste as much time texting with the second and third. I got to the addresses, googled to see for sale, and checked the county records to see who owned them and to see that the original name given was not the same as owner then quickly got to the question of how they would pay from out of state. Then I mentioned that that house was for currently for sale and that ownership did not match their name "can you tell me who you purchased the house from?" On all three once I asked for verification of who they purchased from the texts stopped.

I am glad that I knew enough to see the red flags in these text, and I know most of you will as well, but wanted to put it out there so that we are all aware and if there are a few out there that don't know what to look for in such a situation to hopefully help them from being scammed.

I suggest always ask specific questions that only a legit customer would know such as how did you find out about our company? That's always my number one question not only for marketing purposes but because we are only listed in a few places and most of our customers come from one main website we are listed on. I do know it's hard to determine if a customer is legit by text especially now that I know there are investors from out of state that could very well be looking to hire us, but be very careful because this scam has shown up on my phone 3 times over the past week and they are all out of town or out of the states for treatment of one type or another and all the houses are publicly listed for sale in my service area.

I have been very careful to ask several specific questions because I know there could be legit investors looking to hire us for their out of state investments, but after 3 very similar texts I am sure it is a scam so just be careful!

I chose to post this under contractors, but it posted under Ask about a Real Estate Company instead. Sorry how do I change that?