Do some cities have worse contractors than others?

[Sheryl Sitman]

I just got back from completing a project in SW Florida and was floored by the quality of workmanship and overall management skills of the many contractors that I worked with. I think everyone even showed up when they said they would - it was that good. This was a different type of project than I usually do, but the stark contrast with the experiences I often have in Philadelphia just could not be more extreme. Today, I visited one of my previous contractors who had left Philly for a few years and is back now. He was working on a newbie's project, saving him from absolutely awful workmanship done by another contractor who was about to be fired. I could not get over what I was seeing -this was at a level of disaster that even an unskilled eye could understand that basically nothing was being done right. We talked about the absurdly the non-existent requirements in Pennsylvania  --  a GC does not need to have skills and knowledge. I could see that this newbie investor was headed for a lot of trouble and definitely going to spend quite a bit on fixing what he had allowed someone to do wrong.  So Buyer Beware. When you work in areas like Philadelphia, you really need to check the skill level of your contractors or you will be redoing the work and risk having unhappy tenants and all kinds of problems with the City...    And don't even get me started on the contractors who take a down payment and disappear. Vet each person before you write him a check!

[Robert Gorra]

Sadly, I understand.  I have taken over several projects from contractors that lie, don't know how to correctly progress the job, and GC's that simply disappear and do not watch their guys.  Just now I'm helping an investor that got caught in this trap and we ended up having to cancel the permits from the previous contractor and complete the work to get to rough inspections.  When demand is high, people come out of the woodwork and claim they know what they're doing only to bail after it's clear they didn't manage the job.  It makes things especially difficult for the guy that's being honest with their client because we know that the client has probably paid way too much money to the first GC.  Meaning, they got paid for work that wasn't even done.  

I call it the Philadelphia effect.  

However, there are good GC's and contractor still out there, referrals are always the best way to find them.