Philadelphia, PA - Best Practices to find Rehab Contractors

[David Vitarelli]

Hello All, I have dabbled in real estate for some time now. Personally, I only own two units but I have been active in helping my father "fix and flip" and "fix and rent" about 15 properties over the past 10 years. My personal REI strategy is the fix and rent strategy but I am faced with the sad truth of limited contracting skills so fixing up properties properly is a challenge for me. I am looking to form relationships with local contractors that I can work with on rehabbing investment properties in Philadelphia, PA and surrounding towns. I was hoping there may be a "best practice" or helpful guide that I can follow as I try to find a contractor. Thanks all!

[Rick Jones]

@David Vitarelli

Hi David,

Finding a good contractor(s) is tough work.  Many people have made good suggestions in both this thread and other threads.  You could also try doing a brute force method.I paid a virtual assistant on UpWork (Odesk), $9 to generate a list of contact info for all contractors within a radius of the subject property.

This gave me a list of 200 or so contractors.  I then shot gun emailed all of them with the basics, (time frame, rough budget, summary of the scope of work, address of house, etc).  Then had them all show up together on two days.  You are going to get all sorts of responses.  It will be up to you to initially screen them by their appearance, way they talk, bla bla bla.  You can then further screen them by their bids, references and make sure they are licensed and insured and in good standing.

Make sure you have a scope of work ready to go!  This is very important!  Otherwise the bids you receive will not be directly comparative as you will be relying on the individual contractors memory/interpretation of what you want.  Generate this and print off however many copies to give each contractor one.

Good luck

Rick