
Your Project Starts with Your Planning before Hiring a Contractor
We have all done it. Understanding the difference between price shopping and hiring a contractor is key. No one wants to pay to much for a service, but as property owners, it’s not as simple as finding contractors and having them come out and give you quotes. As a property owner, you need to do your own research prior to requesting bids from contractors. To help our potential clients and to keep our customer service up we feel that is part of our jobs as contractors to help educate our clients. We have put together 5 steps you should follow before you pick up the phone to call a contractor to come to give you an estimate or quote. Remember providing an estimate is a free service offered by most contractors. Even though this service is free it does increase the price of the work someone has to pay for it. So the more estimates that are done for free the more the jobs will eventually cost. We have put together steps you should follow before starting the price shopping.
We are also trying to make your next project a better experience at Chatham Property Maintenance. We are working to input our pricing database that will allow our clients to get a quick no-hassle estimate. We should have this handyman pricing database built within the next year which will provide our clients with an immediate estimate for all the services Chatham Property Maintenance offers. This software will be placed on each page and will be user-friendly.
Steps You Should Follow Before Hiring a Contractor
For this guide to hiring a contractor, we will use a fence installation for our example.
- Planning starts before the call know what type of fence you want and what type of materials i.e wood, vinyl, aluminum
- Have a budget, know how much you intend to spend on your particular fence project.
- Do a Google search to find the average cost for the particular project you are planning. If you are planning to install a fence do a Google search for “price to install stockade style fence” “price to install shadowbox fence” “price to install aluminum fence” “price to install vinyl fence”. This will help you see if you need to increase your budget you wouldn’t want to be wasting time if you thought a fence would cost $2000 and your average bid for your area for that particular fence is $5000.
- Do your research on how the type of fence you want should be built. Chatham Property Maintenance follows a standard for different types of a fence if we didn’t follow these standards we could cut the cost on most of our fence jobs by an average of $500. By following these standards we produce a better quality fence that will last long. In order for you to understand quality, you have to do a little research. Price should not be your only deciding factor for your residential and commercial projects.
- Now that you have completed these steps you are ready to get your free estimates. We recommend calling at least three contractors (we all know what the price in our area is so you will not see a drastic difference, your main difference comes from the current workload).
Why Choose Us for your next project
Since 2009 we have provided residential and commercial property owners professional Handyman services from small repairs to complete home renovations. We also specialize in landscaping, and pressure cleaning services for both residential and commercial clients. If you are looking for a professional and reliable contractor you have come to the right place. Call or text 912-988-3832 for your free estimate or you can fill out our contact form here.
Good advice. It’s true that cheaper is NOT always best, and researching a company ahead of time is a must!