Tim Bell power team 4

The next person on your list of your power team is contractors. Now, contractors may not be as important as the previous two real estate agent and title company, but they can be helpful. If you're going to do wholesale deals, you may not necessarily need a contractor. However, if you're going to do fix and flip deals or buy and hold deals, you'll definitely need a contractor because there will be times when the property needs work and as a consequence of the property needing work, you're going to need to have a contractor come in to give you a bid on the property. Now, as a wholesaler, we don't necessarily need a bid on the property. I'm going to show you in subsequent lessons. I'm going to be showing you how to estimate the repair costs without having a contractor come to the property. We'll talk about that. But if indeed you're going to do a fix and flip on the property, you're going to buy it, fix it up, and then resell it on a full retail basis, you're going to need a contractor to come in and give you a bid. Once you have that property under contract with the seller, once the seller has agreed to purchase the property, then you need to have that contractor come in to give you a written bid on that property because you've got to know exactly what the repair costs are. Okay, I'm going to show you a way to estimate those repair costs. But once you have the property, once you control the property, you have the property under contract with the seller, then you're going to want to bring in a contractor to give you a written bid. If you're going to do a fix and flip on that property and buy the property, fix it up and then resell it. Okay, if you're wholesaling, you don't need that. And we'll talk about why you don't need that later on. But anyway, contractors. So again, let's talk about the two things. Number one, where to find them and number two, what to say to them once you do find them. There are several different ways to find contractors. Again, the real estate investment club can be a good source. And in a later lesson we will talk about. In fact, I think we already did talk about how to go to the websites where you can find real estate investment clubs. So sometimes contractors will hang out at the real estate investment club wanting to find you to do business with. Other times, the other investors, including the president, owner, operator of the club, will have contractors that they will be willing to refer to you. Okay, so that's A good way to do. Turns out that the home improvement stores aren't the greatest place in the world anymore to find contractors because they not only want to sell you the materials, they want to sell you the labor, too. Which means they're not going to turn you on to their contractors unless their contractors can install the things for you. So really, the real estate investment club is a great way to do it. Also, if you drive by a house, remember we talked about this in a previous lesson. If you drive by a house where you see a dumpster, you see people working on the property. But those contractors could be good contractors for you because they've already been vetted out by another investor. So that's another way to find contractors as you need them. Now, what do you say to contractors once you find them? Well, one of the things I've sent you is a dialogue, some questions. I call it contractor suggested contractor interview questions that I've sent you. Now, I don't recommend you ask all these questions. I want you to be aware of these questions, but I don't want you to ask them. I want you to scroll to the bottom of that handout that talks about interviewing contractors, and I want you to read the bottom part. The bottom part says if you don't want to ask all the questions, you're in a hurry. There's a shortcut. The easiest, surest, and fastest way to check out a contractor is to contact at least five of their past customers. And ask those five past customers four simple questions. Number one, how was the contractor to work with in general? Number two, did they get the job done when they said they would? Number three, did they do professional quality, craftsmanlike work? And number four, did they stay within the bid price they gave you? Okay, if you ask five of their legitimate past customers those four questions in 20 questions, you'll know everything you ever wanted to know about whether or not you should work with that particular contractor. Because. And because if those people are honest about how the contractor was to work with, they will tell you. Now, the reason we asked for five instead of just two or three. If we ask for one or two or three, they're probably just going to give us their cousin with a different last name and their best friend with a different last name. Okay? Again, we need genuine, real former customers. Okay? That's why we asked for five. It's unlikely they're going to fake five. So that's how you find a contractor. Okay. And that's how you interview them. Now, one of the other documents that I've sent you talks about a contractor actually is a contract that you can use. It's an agreement that you can use. It's called the subcontractor agreement. Basically it's an agreement you can use with your contractors. Again though, before you use it, I strongly recommend that you read every word and you do your best to understand every word such that you can know how it works. Okay. It's a simple Microsoft Word document. You can change things in it if you need to and you will need to. For example, it asks for your company name, your company address, your company phone number, your company fax, your email, things like that. So again you may want to look through. In fact I suggest you do read through the subcontractor agreement because that is an agreement that you can use with a contractor to make sure that you and they are treated fairly in the relationship there. So again, contractor is another great person for your team.