How to Work With Contractors, Inspectors and Construction Pros Without Getting Burned

Dealing with contractors, inspectors, material suppliers and everyone else involved in a construction project is one of the most difficult parts of this business. And your personality has more to do with how you handle it than most people want to admit.

If you tend to believe the best in people it's going to be rough.

If you tend not to believe people it's also going to be rough.

The only way to have real success with any of it is to have your facts straight and to trust people while verifying everything you're told until you know it well enough that verification becomes second nature.

Finding actual facts in this business is genuinely difficult. A lot of people carry titles they haven't earned. Building inspectors make $35,000 to $45,000 a year. If they truly knew everything about construction they could land a superintendent position with a property management or construction company making double that. But they would have to actually know what they were doing. The title is easier than the expertise.

You can struggle through projects without paying for real professionals. I see it done all the time. People make it work through sheer stubbornness and trial and error. But you can also budget for professionals from the start and spend your time verifying facts and cutting checks instead of putting out fires.

There is nothing wrong with hiring pros. Not everyone has the personality to grab three guys off a corner and flip a half million dollar home. That's not about ability. It's about who you are and how you operate best.

Billion dollar REITs hire me to evaluate their acquisitions, mostly for rehab and repositioning scope and budget, and to make recommendations on long term maintenance planning. They aren't experts in construction and getting multiple bids would require hundreds of hours of work by people who might never find the real number anyway. So it has more value to just pay someone who already knows.

I do the same thing myself. I hire engineers to review my designs and plans to make sure I'm not overloading walls or missing something I forgot about. I am a professional but that means I know my area well and I don't pretend to be a pro where I'm not. That distinction matters more than most people realize.

Knowing what you know is valuable. Knowing what you don't know is worth even more.

If you want a construction professional who knows exactly where his expertise starts and stops and will tell you the truth about both, let's talk.

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