What to ask a general contractor before you sign

Ask every contractor the same nine questions and write the answers down. The differences will be obvious, and they will not be about price.

Most people interviewing builders ask about cost and timeline, get three numbers that aren't comparable, and pick the middle one. Here's a better list.

The short answer

You are not hiring a price. You are hiring the person who will answer the phone in month four when something behind a wall isn't what anyone expected. Interview for that.

The nine questions

1. What's your licence number, and is it in your name? Then go verify it yourself with the California Contractors State License Board. It takes a minute and shows you the classification, the status, the bond and any history.
2. Who is actually on my job every day? Not who sold it — who runs it. Ask how often that person is on site and whether they'll be running other jobs at the same time.
3. Are you pulling the permits on your licence? The answer should be yes, without hesitation.
4. How do you handle changes? You want a written change order process with pricing before the work happens, not a conversation at the end.
5. What's in your allowances? Allowances are placeholder budgets for things not yet chosen — tile, fixtures, cabinetry. A bid full of low allowances looks cheap and isn't. Ask what each one assumes.
6. What's explicitly excluded? The exclusions page tells you more about a bid than the total does.
7. How do you handle a pre-1978 house? Most of the good stock here is older, and disturbing painted surfaces requires lead-safe practices from a certified firm under the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule. A good answer takes one sentence.
8. Can I talk to a client whose job went sideways? Anyone can produce three happy references. Ask for one where something went wrong, and listen to how they describe fixing it.
9. What would make you turn this project down? A builder with no answer either hasn't thought about it or will say yes to anything.

Answers that should worry you

• "We can start Monday." On a project that needs drawings and permits, that means starting without them.
• "You can pull the permit as the owner." This moves liability to you and sometimes means they can't pull one.
• "We'll figure that out as we go." Field decisions cost more than paper decisions, every time.
• A large deposit up front. California limits what a contractor can take as a down payment. If someone wants a third of the job before mobilising, ask why.
• Discomfort with the exclusions question. Every bid has exclusions. Only some contractors will show them to you.

About the lowest bid

When one bid comes in dramatically under the others, it is almost never because that builder found efficiencies nobody else could. It's usually one of three things: design and permit fees left out, allowances set unrealistically low, or scope quietly excluded.

The number you signed will not be the number you pay, and the gap gets discovered one change order at a time. Compare bids line by line against the same scope, or you're not comparing anything. We wrote about where those numbers actually come from in what a home remodel costs in the Coachella Valley.

Asking us the same questions

Our licence is 788530, held since 2001, and Darrin runs the jobs himself rather than handing them off after the sale. On question nine: we'll turn down a project when a remodel can't fix what's actually wrong — when the problem is the lot, the street or the view, or when your layout already works and what you dislike is the surfaces. We'd rather tell you that on the walkthrough than after you've paid for drawings.

Bring the list. Tell us about the project and ask us all nine.