Hiring Contractors

August 21st, 2025

REALTORS® are known for being a great resource when it comes to recommending a good contractor to hire. We keep lists of the contractors we love, so we are able to help our clients. At TK Homes, we only believe in giving contractor information for those contractors who we feel have given superior service. If our name is attached to a referral partner, we want to make sure they are good. We also only like to refer people we have worked with.

Unfortunately, I have had some situations personally that have really bothered me. The first situation was with a moving company. Since I didn’t have a moving company to recommend, I asked within my trusted network if someone knew a great moving company. A local real estate team responded with a moving company name and positive review, so I felt confident they were good. I was wrong. This moving company broke some of my clients’ furniture and charged them more than the estimated cost. When I intervened, surprisingly, the business owner raised his voice to me and was not accepting responsibility. By the end of our conversation, he offered to pay for everything. This is an example of why it is important to us to have used the contractor we are referring.
 

We have a saying on our team…contractors are great until they are not. So, even if we have used a contractor previously and loved them, we do not always know if they are continuing to give top-notch service. Recently, we have had concerns with two past contractors. Our garage door guy, who we really liked and had reasonable prices, just stop communicating, and a sewer guy we always used, got too busy, and his team started doing incomplete work. This is why even if we have a great contractor, we never solely rely on them and will constantly be working to add new and additional resources to our contractor list for our clients.

The moral of the story is to get multiple contractors when you want a job performed. It is good to look at reviews, but if there are red flags, like bad communication, trust your gut. They may be too busy. You can definitely ask your REALTOR® for recommendations, but as a consumer, it is important that you contact the contractors directly for multiple reasons—one being that then you can hear everything from the horse’s mouth and not secondhand. Sometimes information can get lost in the translation. Also, it is important that you feel good about the contractors you are hiring. Having your REALTOR® be the go-between can be challenging for everyone involved. If contractors get calls from both the REALTOR® and the client, time can be wasted. If the client is able to talk directly with the contractor, that can definitely be more efficient.

At TK Homes, we will help our clients in any way we can, including giving them the names and contact information of any of our preferred vendors. We always encourage our clients to check reviews and research contractors for themselves. Remember the saying from above—contractors are great, until they are not. If you have any real estate related needs, contact a TK Homes agent today, and let’s make your real estate goals a reality!

~ Written by TK Homes REALTOR®, Mary Smith