PromiseNorth t1_j9mnct1 wrote on February 23, 2023 at 1:41 AM

Good luck! Searched for 6 years and even put down deposits that were returned, and kept getting pushed out further and further. So sick of trying to beg I took on a fairly massive deck project myself. Took the entire summer and 25k+ in materials but got it done.

My experience is: if the job is under 100k -250k contractors will bid extremely high. Almost offensively. Hey decks can be a big jobs, demo alone took me a month. But, they seem to be very smart and selective about the jobs they want, and take and quote very high. It’s a business, I get it and they want a 50% margin. I’ll do it but it’s gonna really cost you seems to be the mantra. Finding a good contractor to do a small job in Chittenden county is torturous.

The good ones seem to move away to faster growing easy to build communities or are retiring. Mid career guys are 🦈’s.

d-cent t1_j9op0b4 wrote on February 23, 2023 at 2:15 PM

Spot on. Contractors are in demand here. Why would a contractor waste their time on creating a bid and doing all the overhead work for a small job when they have big jobs right there?

With the costs of overhead here, putting out expensive proposals is the only way contractors are going to do the job.

PromiseNorth t1_j9qi1pi wrote on February 23, 2023 at 9:09 PM

And weed out the ones they don’t want to do & make sure that the profit is commensurate. For OP I’m more or less expressing how challenging it is to get small jobs contracted. I was ready to write a check for 50k and couldn’t get someone for 6 years even with excepted bids and 50% material down payments to reserve slots.