Contractors by the hour or quote the job

[Chris C.]

I did a quick search but didn't find a discussion about this.

How do you guys pay your contractors?

Do you guys let them quote the job knowing they need to pad it a little in case they mis-estimate the job?

Do you allow them to work by the hour? Could be better price IF they do not fudge the hours.

What do you guys do? My wife gets mad because I trust them to work by the hour. She thinks they should quote the job. She makes a good point so I am asking the experts.

Also, which ever method you use, how do you control them. With the hourly pay do you put a limit on the number of hours a job should take. If they need to go over they should call you. Any other ideas like this?

[J Scott]

Others may disagree, but I'm a big proponent of only paying by the job. I don't want my project manager to have to scrutinize every second of every contractor's time, and I certainly don't want to encourage work to take longer than it should.

That said, I have a handyman who I trust implicitly, and he often has the task of handling the final punch list for a rehab job; because punch list items will continue to pop up over the last few days of the job, I'm happy to pay him by the day (or even by the hour) for this work.

That work and that one contractor are my exception to the pay-per-job rule...