Instead try to make business friends with those who you believe may be useful to you in the future, and those who share a common interest in the type of Real Estate Investing you intend to do (no matter what their level of knowledge and experience is).Have some business cards printed only with you name, your email and your cellular number and the type of investor you hope to be (such as single family buy and hold investor).Keep going to the meetups and making new friends and re-cementing bonds with existing business friends.

Perhaps....Sell on better QUALITY at a comparable price point.Some of the bigger guys (right now) are lipstick on a pig as far as quality goes--low end electrical sockets, gaps in the framing, cheap cement slumps etc...

Lots of them also skip over how to level your floor or how to install cement board if you are tiling over sub floors.

Looking around at the neighborhood, which we also live in, there is cracked cement, messed up grass, and many ground out tree stumps that are no different from this rental.

steve k, no, i do not take the lowest bids every time. the reason the last two guys were lower than the rest was because i have worked with them in the past. the brick guy does excellent cement/brick work and he just happened to be there when we got the latest house.i just want a fair price. i had a guy give me a quote for drywall, doors, tile bath and shower 800sq ft basement for 6k. and that's labor only. i buy all the materials. of course i think this is insane to do drywall, 10 doors and tile a shower for that price.john, normally i supply the materials and they just charge for labor. when i get a quote that shows me that they are making $50+ per hr (since i know how long it takes to do the job) really ticks me off. how much do your contractors make an hr?

I feel like I shouldn't alert my buyers network for something that isn't cement.

here's the million dollar question...we all know you're supposed to, but how many of us actually lay cement board down before tile?

The problem was that the powder laundry detergent (such as Tide) did not disolve completely and had actually cemented together at that exit point to form a partial blockage that interrupted the flow of the water but did not stop it.

The old college try . . . in college, you are allowed to use aluminum bats, therefore, I would be holding one in my hands during the next conversation with this contractor (for prop purposes).Any decent contractor who works with cement knows that you should not pour a slab if it looks like it will rain.

If you're going to do it your self just look at the bags in the cement isle and read directions.