Starting your own contracting company

[Sonya Brown]

So my husband and I recently purchased 2 rehab properties, the problem is getting contractors to come and give you an estimate. They either show up and don't get back to you, don't even show up at all or the ones that did get back to us, the price ranges were all over the place.  My husband and some of his friends and family members are very familiar with various types of construction. We are considering just starting our own contracting company to get started and would like advice on how to go about it and what type of estimating books or software does anyone use for labor and material costs??? I did purchase both books by J Scott by the way. 

[Nicole Pettis]

@Sonya Brown

You would start this like any other business, however you would need to get insured and bonded, even if you hired independent contractors.

However if you hire employees, that's a whole different ballgame, that's why many rehabber's don't, because there is much cost added when you start doing that (payroll, taxes and all that fun stuff).

As for estimating. You need to figure out material costs first and then how much you would charge hourly for each job, then figure out how many hours it takes to do the job. There is a book that has all construction jobs down to the minute. 

http://www.enr.com/economics

Here's another site
https://www.fixr.com

These are just to give you ideas, I am not affiliated with either. 

You can also follow J Scott's rehab costs book, however hourly varies from state to state.

Another way is to get an idea on average cost is by talking to many contractors. If you are getting bids all over the place, you need to take into consideration if its a "one man show" or if they have a crew, or if they have been in business for many years and so on. If you have 3 bids that range, then I would figure out what is the average and start from there. The best advice I got was use contractors that have been in business for more than 3 years and check references. 

If they don't get back to you, then you wouldn't want to hire them anyway. Honestly, contractors are one of the most difficult pieces of the puzzle. You want to hire slowly, fire quickly. So I would just do your due diligence with them. 

Hope this helps!