Save Thousands On Your Project
It is a well-known fact that General Contractors or GC’s have received a bad reputation for many years. This has made many people wary for very good reason. Do you realize that as many as 90% of people who have hired GC’s for their remodeling or new home building needs have had some degree of bad experience with the General Contractor. I don’t want you to become a part of this statistic and it’s reassuring to know that if you can arm yourself with the basic information on how things in the home building and remodeling industry work then you can avoid some of the techniques these people use to separate good people like you from your money while not fulfilling your goals.
I’ve always considered the act of entering into a business venture with someone that you assume will have your best interest in mind from beginning of the project to the end, to be quite a risky undertaking. Let’s face it, you need to be cautious when it’s your money for their goods or services. After all hiring a General Contractor or Builder is no different than hiring the right financial adviser or auto mechanic in this respect. Hire the right one and they will be a valuable help to you but choose the wrong one and you might pay for some very expensive mistakes.
Besides deceiving their clients, there can be issues like a job that is not well time managed, or involves many mistakes, the job that causes unnecessary stress on the homeowner and ends with less than pleasing results.
Let’s face it; you are your best advocate when it comes to preventing this type of practice. But we will assume that you don’t do this for a living. Do you think you can spot the tricks these people perform because you are intelligent? In my thirty plus years I have seen some very smart people by anyone’s standard get taken by some of the most amateur contractors you could imagine. This industry is full of people looking to make a quick buck and I have seen very intelligent scholarly people get fleeced by guys who never finished high school, but who became a General Contractor.
I’ve been teaching homeowners just like you how uncomplicated it is to learn to become their own General Contractor for years. With recent shows like those created by great General Contractor Mike Holmes more and more people are becoming aware of the pitfalls of the uninformed hiring of General Contractors. The dishonest ones are often charming, seem knowledgeable, personable, and excited to get your project going. They probably seem like good guys until the contract is signed and a deposit is paid, then the reality begins to sink in. Maybe they are never on site or unreachable, or maybe their subcontractors don’t perform in a professional manor. Once problems begin to surface it can be a long ride to the end.
From this point it can be common to receive promises or verbally agreed things that never happen. They are statements made in the moment to pacify a frustrated client but never get carried out. Then there are the price increases which they can conveniently slip in after the project has begun.
The project begins to linger on much longer than promised you will hear all kinds of excuses why. Once you arrive at the visible end you might find many unresolved issues while facing a General Contractor holding out his hand for final payment. There are many instances of subcontractors who don’t get paid because the GC pockets the money and burns them. So, how do you prevent this? We will teach you exactly how here.
It is no wonder with all these reasons and countless others why many people are leery of GC’s and the fact is, they should be. The fact is there are many guys out there who are not capable of doing any more than ripping people off. If you wonder why that guy keeps getting more clients it’s because the people they worked for who might have even referred them to you put up with them and they are to embarrassed to admit how bad they got taken advantage of. Let’s face it, when you are describing your project to friends at the club it’s much more pleasing to describe the beautiful project than to talk about how you were taken advantage of by the GC.
How would you feel about announcing to a group of friends that you signed into a contract with someone who you barely knew without researching them well? Now you have determined the guy is taking advantage of you because you really don’t know how this construction process works anyway and he is already telling you the cost will be at least 30% more than you expected. After making such an announcement would you still feel good about asking them to trust you as their financial adviser or any other profession where money and knowledge cross paths? You see, this is why so many intelligent people suffer in silence after making such a decision. This is also why the cycle continues, nobody what’s to be the fool who faces ridicule by revealing this guy’s shady practices to the public…Don’t be the next victim.
I am in a unique situation here because I am not a General Contractor. I have been teaching homeowners just like you for over thirty years how to plumb their own homes, install HVAC equipment, understand basic electrical systems and even frame their own homes. I have been designing custom homes and selling all types of building materials since the late seventies.
I work every day with homeowners and a vast array of both good and very bad General Contractors. I have helped many homeowners through the horrors of a bad GC experience and I have taught hundreds of homeowners just like you how easy it is to take on the role of being your own GC. Subcontractors love working on the projects I design because I make it easy for them to work directly with the homeowner making everyone’s life simpler, you read that right, becoming your own GC will make yours and everyone else’s lives simpler.
Why is this, because you control the ability to treat everyone from the material suppliers to the subcontractors as business partners? Even your lender will love the idea because they know you are in complete control of the money and they don’t have to worry about liens from subcontractors who don’t get paid. (More about liens later)That has been one of my most notable concerns over the years. All too often a General Contractor pockets some of the money and does not pay everyone. This happens because they rushed the estimating process and did not create a clear and accurate budget or they left something out of that budget that the homeowner was promised. Either way the homeowner ends up paying twice in order to clear liens and be able to finalize their mortgage.
If you become the General Contractor then you know where the money goes, you know what everything costs, you have direct contact with all subcontractors and you control the pace of your project. You can easily accomplish all this with the right knowledge.
If this idea sounds daunting to you let me ask you a question. Are you a parent? I raised six boys and I can tell you that parenting is a daunting task. I can also tell you that being a GC is a much easier task. If you are a parent then you already have more General Contracting skills than most GC’s. After all, somebody has to be the adult, the one who is in charge. Somebody also has to explain what the expectations are and watch over and lead the way during progress; they must also encourage cooperation and address unacceptable practices. In construction there will be some Fridays where everyone deserves a reward. There will also be some Mondays where somebody gets a time out.
So as I mentioned if you are even an average parent, you already make use of the core skills found in a great GC.
If you are ready to read a quick run through of what makes a successful General Contractor then click the button below and find out just how easy it can be.
General Contractor Responsibilities
