4 ms·

As a homeowner for 8+ years, this is a HUGE problem. Like really huge. Companies like thumbtack, home advisor, angie's list, craigslist etc are mostly not usefu

As a homeowner for 8+ years, this is a HUGE problem. Like really huge. Companies like thumbtack, home advisor, angie's list, craigslist etc are mostly not useful (I have tried them all). I hope you guys succeed. The issue is however not just about price or cost. It is mostly about finding reliable, knowledge and honest contractors which for some reason is not that easy. The great contractors are usually very busy already. They don't have a "need to generate leads" problem. The best way to find them is word of mouth. If someone can figure out a way to collect this information (for example we have people asking on nextdoor and facebook local groups), it will be a gold mine.

dharmab 5y ago
It's especially difficult to find licensed and bonded contractors and handymen who won't straight up ghost a project.
vm 5y ago
Spot on. It’s all about trust, which in this context means getting the offering honest scoping & pricing, completing work as promised, and doing quality work. Contractors who deliver that trusted experience already are usually booked up and hard to get hold of when you need them. We’re betting that more contractors can achieve those same standards in our structure, and we can deliver better availability and consistent trust to homeowners.
- sithlord 5y ago
  You think that the type of contractor who is already unreliable will be do better having to log into an app to do things, than literally answer a call or text from their phone!?
  - vm 5y ago
    We need to unpack what makes someone “unreliable” because we’ve found every single contractor runs late, ghosts some leads, misses some scopes, etc. The root cause is that it’s a complex job to manage and they may not excel at those small business tasks, despite having excellent craftsmanship. We simplify their job. Normally they would have to field leads, visit homes to scope jobs, find suppliers who can deliver the right parts, figure out a price, convince customers to choose them, and then balance that with their other projects. Instead, we send them fully scoped jobs, parts pre-ordered and ready for pick up, customers already scheduled, and more. We do a lot behind the scenes to take that burden off their shoulders, and let them focus on doing great work.
    - sithlord 5y ago
      I think the big unreliability I have seen, and often hear people complain about is, work gets done 90% of the way then they just basically stop showing up. Or some of the work is bad, and they have no desire to show back up and fix it. I guess the issue being that, it is more profitable to ghost them. Is HomeBreeze going to insure the jobs?
      - vm 5y ago
        We’ve seen similar things for general contractors and construction, which is a market we don’t yet serve. Today we target jobs that are completed within one day. We find our jobs get prioritized because we drive material volume to contractors.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Exactly. It's sometimes hard to just get someone on the phone willing to take your money. You leave a message and they won't even bother to return your call. When you finally talk to someone they're either booked for the next four months, or they are just not really all that interested in doing your small job.
hardtke 5y ago
My brother is an honest contractor in the Bay Area and he gets called several times per day by potential clients. The problem is that he can't scale to meet demand because of a dire shortage of labor and subcontractors (painters in particular at the moment). The contractors that will answer your call and give you an estimate tend to be what he calls "paper contractors" that don't have their own crew and subcontract out everything. These are the jobs that end up taking two years where there never seems to be anyone actually working. I don't think matching technology can fix the market -- what's needed is efficiency gains on the contractor side as well as some way to increase the labor pool.
- kornish 5y ago
  Is he...reasonably honest? (asking because as a bit of trivia, there's an SF handyman named Reasonably Honest Mike who's both hilarious and effective. http://reasonablemike.com/about.html http://reasonablemike.com/about.html)
- vm 5y ago
  What type of contracting does your brother do? We see what you’re describing with general contractors but rarely with plumbers who are our initial focus
  - hardtke 5y ago
    Mostly kitchen and bathroom remodeling. For some reason, plumbing is one of the few types of work where it doesn't seem to be as hard to find someone (at least in the Bay Area). Unless, as happened recently to me, you have a leaking shower drain in which case you are completely hosed.
bradknowles 5y ago
We found that Angie’s List was useful, until it became popular. Then too many people started using it and less reputable people started gaming the system, and then it all went down the toilet. Same with Craigslist before that. I would say that the same sort of problem will occur with all these services, unless you can bring new functionality to the problem where you can guarantee the level and quality and speed of service. See also “tragedy of the commons”.
- vm 5y ago
  We have a few ideas on how to manage this but totally agree that maintaining quality is critical (and hard!)
city41 5y ago
I couldn't agree more. As far as I am concerned this problem remains completely unsolved. I've had very bad experiences with Angi, HomeAdvisor (which now looks to be owned by Angi), Yelp and NextDoor recommendations. Finding good contractors is so hard I've changed to doing as much work myself as I possibly can.
- jwithington 5y ago
  I've had great experiences with contractors recommended to me by other people on NextDoor. Thumbtack is a dumpster fire.
brudgers 5y ago
The market is efficient. Good contractors have good clients and work on good jobs. They have B2B business relationships. It is a two sided market for lemons. The contractors are mostly contacted by lemon customers. Mostly lemon contractors are likely to respond. What makes homeowners lemon customers besides price sensitivity and non-repeating projects is inexperience. Construction scheduling is in NP. Professionals subjectively incorporate that into their expectations with experience and the experience is often at the institutional level. Weather delays, materials shortages, slow owner decision making, things hidden behind drywall, bad soil underground, etc etc. The second ’etc’ because any of these things on someone else’s job affects your job. Nobody who has been around the rodeo actually believes it will be done in time for Christmas. Maybe Memorial Day if you are lucky. But Labor Day just to be safer.
- vm 5y ago
  Interesting... HomeBreeze has quickly become an important B2B relationship for the home pros we work with. Although a lot of what you're describing is for construction, which we don't serve, your comment makes me think that we could be giving homeowners access to great contractors who they wouldn't be able to otherwise access.
  - brudgers 5y ago
    Installing water heaters is, as you know, construction. Giving homeowners access to average contractors is a step up. Hard times are the measure of relationships. In your case it will be when you have to choose one side of the market’s interests over the other. Ultimately, vetting of customers is necessary. That’s equilibrium. The supply of sweet lemons is limited.
- version_five 5y ago
  This is basically a better version of what I came here to say. I worked in a family construction business, and my perspective / experiencr is that good, established contractors do no advertising and have years of backlog (at least for custom homes or major renovations). I like how you define two markets, that's how I have seen it. There are people that are looking for quality and have the experience to know what to look for and what to pay in terms of money and patience, and there are those that watched a show about how to negotiate with your contractor and get three quotes, etc. Ironically, you usually pay less with a good contractor because you're paying for work and not marketing. I've seen different variations on the "connect you with a contractor" business model, and to me they don't work because good contractors are not a commodity. There is definitely a class of contractor that will go for this, but they are always the worst ones because if they were better they would be loaded up with work without having to pay in to a service that takes a cut from them. For very routine jobs, this kind of service is provable fine. Like ordering McDonald's from uber eats. And this appears to be what they are initially targeting.

dharmab 5y ago

It's especially difficult to find licensed and bonded contractors and handymen who won't straight up ghost a project.

vm 5y ago

Spot on. It’s all about trust, which in this context means getting the offering honest scoping & pricing, completing work as promised, and doing quality work. Contractors who deliver that trusted experience already are usually booked up and hard to get hold of when you need them. We’re betting that more contractors can achieve those same standards in our structure, and we can deliver better availability and consistent trust to homeowners.

sithlord 5y ago
You think that the type of contractor who is already unreliable will be do better having to log into an app to do things, than literally answer a call or text from their phone!?
- vm 5y ago
  We need to unpack what makes someone “unreliable” because we’ve found every single contractor runs late, ghosts some leads, misses some scopes, etc. The root cause is that it’s a complex job to manage and they may not excel at those small business tasks, despite having excellent craftsmanship. We simplify their job. Normally they would have to field leads, visit homes to scope jobs, find suppliers who can deliver the right parts, figure out a price, convince customers to choose them, and then balance that with their other projects. Instead, we send them fully scoped jobs, parts pre-ordered and ready for pick up, customers already scheduled, and more. We do a lot behind the scenes to take that burden off their shoulders, and let them focus on doing great work.
  - sithlord 5y ago
    I think the big unreliability I have seen, and often hear people complain about is, work gets done 90% of the way then they just basically stop showing up. Or some of the work is bad, and they have no desire to show back up and fix it. I guess the issue being that, it is more profitable to ghost them. Is HomeBreeze going to insure the jobs?
    - vm 5y ago
      We’ve seen similar things for general contractors and construction, which is a market we don’t yet serve. Today we target jobs that are completed within one day. We find our jobs get prioritized because we drive material volume to contractors.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ryandrake 5y ago
Exactly. It's sometimes hard to just get someone on the phone willing to take your money. You leave a message and they won't even bother to return your call. When you finally talk to someone they're either booked for the next four months, or they are just not really all that interested in doing your small job.

hardtke 5y ago

My brother is an honest contractor in the Bay Area and he gets called several times per day by potential clients. The problem is that he can't scale to meet demand because of a dire shortage of labor and subcontractors (painters in particular at the moment). The contractors that will answer your call and give you an estimate tend to be what he calls "paper contractors" that don't have their own crew and subcontract out everything. These are the jobs that end up taking two years where there never seems to be anyone actually working. I don't think matching technology can fix the market -- what's needed is efficiency gains on the contractor side as well as some way to increase the labor pool.

kornish 5y ago
Is he...reasonably honest? (asking because as a bit of trivia, there's an SF handyman named Reasonably Honest Mike who's both hilarious and effective. http://reasonablemike.com/about.html http://reasonablemike.com/about.html)
vm 5y ago
What type of contracting does your brother do? We see what you’re describing with general contractors but rarely with plumbers who are our initial focus
- hardtke 5y ago
  Mostly kitchen and bathroom remodeling. For some reason, plumbing is one of the few types of work where it doesn't seem to be as hard to find someone (at least in the Bay Area). Unless, as happened recently to me, you have a leaking shower drain in which case you are completely hosed.

bradknowles 5y ago

We found that Angie’s List was useful, until it became popular. Then too many people started using it and less reputable people started gaming the system, and then it all went down the toilet. Same with Craigslist before that. I would say that the same sort of problem will occur with all these services, unless you can bring new functionality to the problem where you can guarantee the level and quality and speed of service. See also “tragedy of the commons”.

vm 5y ago
We have a few ideas on how to manage this but totally agree that maintaining quality is critical (and hard!)

city41 5y ago

I couldn't agree more. As far as I am concerned this problem remains completely unsolved. I've had very bad experiences with Angi, HomeAdvisor (which now looks to be owned by Angi), Yelp and NextDoor recommendations. Finding good contractors is so hard I've changed to doing as much work myself as I possibly can.

jwithington 5y ago
I've had great experiences with contractors recommended to me by other people on NextDoor. Thumbtack is a dumpster fire.

brudgers 5y ago

The market is efficient. Good contractors have good clients and work on good jobs. They have B2B business relationships. It is a two sided market for lemons. The contractors are mostly contacted by lemon customers. Mostly lemon contractors are likely to respond. What makes homeowners lemon customers besides price sensitivity and non-repeating projects is inexperience. Construction scheduling is in NP. Professionals subjectively incorporate that into their expectations with experience and the experience is often at the institutional level. Weather delays, materials shortages, slow owner decision making, things hidden behind drywall, bad soil underground, etc etc. The second ’etc’ because any of these things on someone else’s job affects your job. Nobody who has been around the rodeo actually believes it will be done in time for Christmas. Maybe Memorial Day if you are lucky. But Labor Day just to be safer.

vm 5y ago
Interesting... HomeBreeze has quickly become an important B2B relationship for the home pros we work with. Although a lot of what you're describing is for construction, which we don't serve, your comment makes me think that we could be giving homeowners access to great contractors who they wouldn't be able to otherwise access.
- brudgers 5y ago
  Installing water heaters is, as you know, construction. Giving homeowners access to average contractors is a step up. Hard times are the measure of relationships. In your case it will be when you have to choose one side of the market’s interests over the other. Ultimately, vetting of customers is necessary. That’s equilibrium. The supply of sweet lemons is limited.
version_five 5y ago
This is basically a better version of what I came here to say. I worked in a family construction business, and my perspective / experiencr is that good, established contractors do no advertising and have years of backlog (at least for custom homes or major renovations). I like how you define two markets, that's how I have seen it. There are people that are looking for quality and have the experience to know what to look for and what to pay in terms of money and patience, and there are those that watched a show about how to negotiate with your contractor and get three quotes, etc. Ironically, you usually pay less with a good contractor because you're paying for work and not marketing. I've seen different variations on the "connect you with a contractor" business model, and to me they don't work because good contractors are not a commodity. There is definitely a class of contractor that will go for this, but they are always the worst ones because if they were better they would be loaded up with work without having to pay in to a service that takes a cut from them. For very routine jobs, this kind of service is provable fine. Like ordering McDonald's from uber eats. And this appears to be what they are initially targeting.