Did have a discussion with an electrician about upgrading some of the 60 amp service.

When my tenants have an issue, I have a friend check out the issue before calling a plumber, electrician, etc.

Let me know if you have any electrical needs, I was an electrician for a number of years before switching careers.

This became an issue when the electrician came through punching holes to run wires.

I went with a new electrician that was well referred as this was going to be a little bigger job than just installing new plugs and dropping a few light cans in.

The bigger pockets calculators are excellent for being able to run the numbers.If you have an inspection period, you can hop on getting estimates from a roofing contractor, electrician, plumber, etc.

As a carpenter I figure I can purchase these & install them myself and leave the major work to the contractor, plumber, electrician, etc.

Each individual job (landscaping, painting, carpet install, tile installer, framer, electrician, plumber, etc.) has a price quotes and a time they can get it done by.

Also I'm sure its more time consuming to hire your own plumbers/ electricians etc, but would it be more cost effective than having a contractor outsource certain jobs and mark it up?

I look at it like this, if you have that much room in it and this is our first set of negotiations, it’s probably not going to be a good fit.What I’ve started doing in my company now is hire two project managers who handle between five and seven projects each instead of trying to get a general contractor to run the jobs.Effectively the project managers act as a general contractor, they call 3-5 companies/people from each trade to come bid on the job.We like to have all the contractors show up at the same time so that they know there is competition.Typically we call five people and only three show up, we then tell the three that are there that we need their bid within 24 hours and from there we will usually only get one or two.The point is that this is qualifying the contractor as to whether or not they are somebody that can work with us or not.If they don’t show up or don’t deliver the bid in time that is an early enough warning sign for me to say they are not going to perform the way I need them to when it comes to time frames and budgets.It is a lot of legwork and a lot of phone calls but once you get the system down and some relationships built you won’t have to go through it for every trade.Licenses, insurance, being bonded and partial and full lien waivers are a must and we have found that this method actually works a lot better than using a GC because effectively all of the trades are self managed.The electrician goes in, does his rough, takes his partial payment, signs the lien waiver and comes back later to do the finish and trim work and get a final payment.He is not trying to do the electric then go hang some drywall, build a deck and replace the roof on your property.I’m not saying that every GC is like that however in my marketplace it is very common that the general contractor will use the license of a friend or coworker for a specific trade like plumbing or electric and then pay one of his guys $12.00 or $15.00 per hour to do the work.Theoretically he is making more money that way but in reality the entire job is slowed down drastically because you have an experienced “generalist” worker performing work that should be done by the licensed professionals.Best of luck to you.