You can break up the progress payments small enough to solve almost any cash flow issue for the contractor (I pay my drywall crew daily) but until the material is on the property and/or installation is occurring, there isn't a need to pay premature invoices let alone writing a 33% check weeks before a job starts.There are too many contractors that start asking for big deposits at the end of the month for me to feel comfortable prepaying for services in large amounts.

This is NJ, where even if I knew for sure which tenant was doing it, there's no way I could get them evicted for premature trash.