Even after you’ve done your due diligence and decided to hire someone, the vetting isn’t quite done.
First of all, make sure there’s a signed contract in place before anybody starts working on your home. “Sometimes people engage contractors on a handshake or some sort of invoice that’s going to be pretty scant in detail,” Gibbs says.
Then, read the entire contract, top to bottom. The most crucial thing to have in writing is an agreed upon payment schedule, multiple lawyers say. What deposit are you expected to put down for the work, when is payment due, and at what intervals of the project? Viteznik stresses that you should never have paid the contractor more of the total price than the percentage of the project they’ve completed.
“If you get into a dispute the first thing I ask is, ‘Okay, how much have you paid?” Viteznik says. “Most people say, ‘It’s a $50,000 kitchen remodel and they’re 10 percent done and I’ve paid $60,000 because there was a change order.”
Something else to have in writing: The agreed-upon timeline for the project, broken down week-by-week.
Cole of Stein Sperling also suggests homeowners read carefully about the dispute resolution process in the contract, in case anything goes wrong. Some contracts give homeowners only a limited window of time after work is complete to notify the contractor about problems; others require that disputes be resolved via arbitration rather than in court. Cole says he’s also seen contracts that say the homeowner’s final payment functions as a kind of waiver of any further claims about issues with the work. It’s important to be aware of exactly what the contract requires, and if there’s anything in the contract (or not in the contract) that makes you uncomfortable, negotiate a change in the language, Cole and other lawyers say.
And remember to take a look at the warranty policy — about a year or two is standard, and no warranty is “not great,” says Gibbs.
If you’re hiring for a significant project costing tens of thousands of dollars, it might be smart to hire a lawyer to look over the contract for you. “Lawyers cost too much, I know,” Viteznik says. But for significant transactions, he says it’s worth paying for a couple hours of a lawyer’s time.
