Its pretty easy to find contractors to give you estimates these days because they aren’t very busy and they need work $$$.
First, you need to go and look in the places these guys would advertise to get new clients.
The obvious places are:
The yellow pages
The Newspaper
Your Free Weekly newspaper (Pennysaver, Thrifty Nickel, The Flyer, etc)
The not so obvious place to look is Craiglist.org
Go to Craiglslist and click on
Your State
And
Your City
Then click on Services
Here is an example of where this page is in my area.
http://tampa.craigslist.org/bbb/
(this is also a great place to find people to help you with your deals ie: House cleaners, painters, handymen, sign hangers for your for sale signs, etc)
You will see many services here and you’ll find contractors advertising for new clients.
You are their next New Client.
Pick a few ads you like and call them to setup an appointment to give you an estimate.
Make sure you tell them you want to update the house to make it look like it’s in “like new” condition. Tell them to find anything they can that’s wrong with the house and make a big deal out of it.
There are 2 ways to handle paying a contractor for the estimate.
Option A
You can be cheap and try to get the estimate for free pretending that you are actually going to use them to do that work. (you are not). This will result in a very short relationship and you will be looking for a new contractor soon.
A Contractor is not going to continue to give you free estimates without ever be awarding any of the jobs.
Option B
Or you can establish a long term relationship with the Contractor, tell them exactly why you need the estimate and that you want it to come in on the high side and Negotiate a flat fee for providing the estimate every time you need one. This will make your life so much easier by having a contractor on your team you can rely on to get these done for you when you need them done quickly.
I recommend you go with Option B
The licensed contractor estimate is a critical part of your short sale package and your BPO package.
Just get it done and you will be happen with the results of your short sales.
Committed to Your Extreme Success,
D.C. Fawcett
The
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