Hungry Contractors Don't Always Mean Low Prices

I have been getting higher prices from my regular contractors lately.  You would think that with fewer jobs available, they would charge even less to keep my business.  That's not the way it always works.

In fact, I have found that contractors feeling financial pressure may actually charge more.  As their obligations mount, contractors may increase their rates in order to capitalize more on every call.

This forces me to cultivate more new contractors than usual.  I'm looking for the hungry new contractor that wants to court my long-term business.  This is his chance to become my regular go-to guy.

Not all new contractors will submit discount bids, because their first priority is to solve today's problems.  If they can get you to hire them, they'll try to charge the max and worry about repeat business some other day.

My regular contractor can only pull a surprise bill on me once.  He'll actually get the wrong result after that.  He won't hear from me for a while, which means less money, not more.  That turns out to be expensive markup on that one job.  He's also driving me to find his replacement, which is his worst case scenario.

For more on how I handle these situations: Does a Slow Real Estate Market Mean Contractor Bargains?