Bidding on work is a cost of doing business and is generally a "sales/business development expense" for a contractor.With that said, I also understand that the average residential GC doesn't have a dedicated estimating department so bidding on work can be very time consuming and a big waste of time if you are dealing with tire kickers. 

Dear BP Community!

For myself it will depend heavily on the sophistication of the client - I have a number that I would never bother asking them for various statements to tie out to their financials or supporting statements for standard accruals since they have a full accounting department responsible for their financials and reconciling their accounts.  

It seems like even though the people that tour seem great they will not all pass our underwriting department. 

You personally go and do a plumbing or electrical job on somebody else's house and get paid --- you know (I think) that that requires having a license...Enforcement would be the appropriate local municipality and/or State department (there are different names for them...). 

@Eric GrunfeldSome cities make crime data publicly-available via websites that the police department maintains and updates. 

Best they can do is contact the fire department and see if it is illegal due to a safety issue or look up their local laws. 

Some of the benefits of the software are listed below:[1] Quickly search for and narrow down relevant deals by any combination of filters: geographical location on a map, deal size, broker, square feet, property type, etc…[2] Pull relevant information from past deals and deals currently on the market - Return metrics, property details, deal documents, etc...[3] Compile all ancillary deal documents and relevant data into one location in the cloud - accessible across all departments in a company.[4] Outsource your data entry into the system (OMs, Investment Memos, Appraisals) that saves your internal resources - $10 – 20 / OM (or other deal doc.).[5] Pipeline tracking: Track deals as they progress through “Marketing Phase, “Underwriting”, “Closing”, “Hold” and “Dead”.There’s a huge demand for market / property data - CRE firms pay $10 – 20k / user / year for a company I won’t name with monopoly in the industry :).

Once you become a licensed agent all of your real estate activities fall under the supervision of your broker and the oversite of your state real estate commission/department of licensure.

I have already spoken with the planning department and zoning would not be an issue in this town but if a deal is in a different town then all bets are off.