When hiring a general contractor to perform work, you should make sure you take your time and go through some basic steps to ensure you make a good quality selection. It is critical to follow these steps, because in the event you hire a bad general contractor, you could not only be out a lot of money, but you can also end up with a lot of building code violations that you are now stuck with. You will also now be stuck with the job of hiring another contractor to finish up and correct the faulty work, and that is hard to find companies that want to mess with that kind of work.

It is something that many people hope they will never need to deal with . But in most cases they have lead themselves to this position they are in. The most common mistake most people make is that they do not do enough checking around to research the contractor they are about to hire.  The most common and biggest mistake you can make is to contract with the first company that comes out and gives you a good price. Look up online to see if they really have a state license or not. There are plenty of times that a general contractor will come to you and claim to have a license, but they really do not.

The bad contractors always assume you are not smart enough to go online and do your research with the state records to see if they are telling the truth. Sometimes they may be using a license of a friend or even a boss of theirs. By going online and doing your research, you ensure yourself that they are at least telling the truth about their license and how long they have had it.  In most cities, you can also call and talk to the local building a code enforcement department and follow up with them on the number of violations your contractor has had.  For example if you are looking for one of the best basement contractors Indianapolis has, you can go to the building department at the state house and find out who has the least code violations.  Interestingly enough the basement finishing Indianapolis contractor’s list is fairly large, so you can plan on this taking a bit of time while doing your research. 

The next most important piece of information to remember is that just because they are cheap, it doesn’t make them the best qualified contractor for the job. When you shop on price alone, you are almost guaranteed to get stuck with someone that is not reliable and isn’t going to provide you a good quality project. If you have several bids from other general contractors and one comes in way too low, you can rest assured that they will not offer you the best choice or work for that job.  In reading reviews online at sites like http://www.builderbuddy.com, you are able to see exactly what the general contractors clients are saying about them.  So it does pay to read ahead of time and do you research.  Remember, cheap doesn’t mean quality. For a lot of contractors the only way for them to get someone to hire them is to be cheap, because they don’t have a long list of satisfied customers to provide as a referral.  Again they may not even be licensed and are only trying to earn money by doing something they know how too. Sure they may still do a great job, but check out past work first.