Why You Always Inspect Before Paying a Contractor

TLDR
A contractor said this house was ready for market. It was not. Soft floors, missing hardware, painters caulk on a toilet, a light fixture just sitting there unconnected. The final 5% of a project is where the profit lives, which is why the final check is the only real tool you have.

Table of Contents

Never Trust a Contractor Saying It Is Done

In this particular house, somebody hired a quasi general contractor to do the work. More like an allarounder since I do not think he had a license. Looking at the work he certainly did not pull permits.

The house is supposed to be ready for market.

It is not.

A house gets done, you cannot just trust people saying it is done. You need to go in and check yourself. Because the house is going on the market tomorrow, or the tenant is moving in tomorrow, and every thing you miss is a thing the next person sees first.

Your contractor said it is done. Your buyer decides if it is done. Those are two different standards.

Always Check Behind Doors and Inside Closets

Here are the first things I check.

  • Behind doors
  • Inside closets
  • Inside cabinets

Mistakes live there. Closets always have crap inside them. Cabinets always have crap inside them. Contractors forget about what is behind doors. That is where I find screws on the floor, light fixtures half installed, trim not finished.

Always check closet doors. They almost never work right. The doors drag. The slides do not align. The hinges are loose.

This is simple stuff and it is why it gets missed.

The Water and Floor Tests I Always Run

You check things actually work.

  • Plumbing works at every fixture
  • Every switch works
  • HVAC turns on
  • No leaks under the faucets
  • Floors are not soft

The floor test is the bounce test. Every time I walk through a house, I am checking the floor. Little bounce. I am making sure the floors are not soft. Soft means the framing underneath is not sufficient, or water damage, or termite eaten, or just bad installation.

Or buckling. Someone installs hardwood floors and does not let them acclimate. Acclimate means they sit in the house for a few days before installation so they match the climate. If you install them when it is hot and humid in the house without AC running, the boards expand, then push up like waves. Hard to fix once it is here.

On LVP floors, check for voids underneath by pressing on spots. Squishy means the installer skipped over uneven spots or left debris under the plank.

Pro Tip
Do the bounce test in four spots: kitchen near the sink, bathroom near the toilet, laundry area, and any bedroom next to an exterior wall. Those are the most likely to show water damage or bad substructure.

Caulk, Escutcheons, and Permit Signs

Specific details that separate a real contractor from an amateur.

Escutcheons. Where water lines enter through a floor or wall, you see little circular metal or plastic pieces that go around the pipe. Those should always be there. When they are missing, you see holes around the pipe. On this house some were missing and one water line was not even connected. That would have been caught by a city inspection, which obviously did not happen here.

Caulk on toilets. Different municipalities handle this differently. Some require you caulk the bottom of a toilet and some ban it. The two schools of thought: caulking protects the floor if water spreads from a leak, but water trapped under the caulk can rot the floor without you seeing it. This house had painters caulk on the toilet. Painters caulk is not waterproof. You use silicone. Some municipalities require a clearly inspection. Nobody inspected this.

Light fixtures. There is a light fixture in one of the basement rooms that is just sitting there. I see no switch that turns it on. It is not wired to anything visible. If the city had inspected, that would have been caught immediately.

Egress. A room does not become a bedroom just because someone put a bed in it. A bedroom needs egress: a window that is a certain size, placed in a way that someone could escape through in an emergency. In basements you sometimes see corrugated steel walls dug around a window. That is an egress well. Without egress, the realtor cannot list that room as a bedroom.

Basement ceiling height. Roughly 7 feet minimum in most places. A door is 80 inches. If the ceiling is barely clearing a door frame, you are probably under code. This house went to cans lights likely because they did not have the ceiling height for a fixture.

Not Cutting Corners vs Not Knowing What They Are Doing

Is it concerning that this guy did not pull permits and probably cannot? Sort of. That happens on a lot of jobs.

The more concerning thing is that I can tell from the work done that he did not do the stuff inside the walls right either.

He does not look like a corner cutter to me. Corner cutting is when contractors maliciously hide things. I think this guy just does not know what the heck he is doing. It shows in the work.

That is a different problem than a dishonest contractor. A dishonest contractor you fire. An incompetent contractor you either retrain or move on from. Incompetence with good intent is more common than pure malice, but it costs you just as much money.

Common Mistake
Assuming that a contractor who is friendly and responsive is also competent. Friendly matters for the relationship, but competent matters for the work. You need both. Check the work, not just the texts.

What a Buyer Actually Sees

Here is what I noticed on this walkthrough that would kill a sale.

  • Caulk patch jobs on walls that were obviously not real drywall repairs
  • Screws sticking out of floors
  • Streaks on paint
  • Floor drains off center in showers
  • Light fixtures hanging from the ceiling not attached to anything
  • Nice paint job over rough prep work

Plus the egress issues, ceiling height issues, and no mirror, no bathroom hardware, no toilet paper holder, no towel holder. The buyer walks in and immediately thinks this is a lot of work.

I am only here to make sure the house is ready for market. Despite what the contractor thinks, it is certainly not ready. Especially in a tough market, when people walk up you need them impressed. Competition is high.

There is not a person who walks in this house and gets impressed. They might be impressed by a discount if they want to do the cleanup themselves. But the buyer you actually want, the family excited about buying a house, is not going to pay top dollar for this.

You attract top dollar buyers by making the house look finished. Those are the only buyers who pay retail.

The Final 5% Is Where the Profit Lives

Three lessons from this house, plus one more.

One. You personally go inspect houses before they go on the market. There are always little things that get missed.

Two. Contractors do not have the same eye you do. You have the vision for what a house should look like on the market. You need to make sure that vision got captured.

Three. You will not get work done if you have already paid for it. Hold a final payment until you have inspected and approved.

Four. It is a tough market right now. Everybody wants it done, including you. But you cannot let the little things go. The final 5% of project completion makes up the majority of the profit you are going to make on a project.

Pretty great that I can just reach out and grab the light fixture that is not attached to anything. Yeah. Not going to do it.

FAQ

What is the first thing I should check on every walkthrough?

Every switch, every faucet, every door behind every door. Those three categories catch 80% of the misses. If something does not work, it gets fixed before final payment.

How much of the final payment should I hold back?

Enough that the contractor is motivated to come back and fix punch list items. Usually 10 to 20% of the total contract. On a 24,000 cosmetic rental, that is 2,400 to 4,800 held until the final walkthrough passes.

What if my contractor refuses to come back for small fixes?

Then they are not getting the final payment in full. Their choice. This is a conversation you have early, ideally in the contract. If it is already late in the project and you did not set this up, you have fewer options.

How do I know if something is a code issue vs just ugly?

Code issues usually involve safety: egress, electrical, plumbing, structural, fire. Ugly is aesthetic: paint, caulk lines, uneven grout. Both matter. Code issues can kill a sale or a rental. Ugly just costs you retail price.

Can I skip the walkthrough if I trust my contractor?

No. Even contractors I have worked with for years occasionally miss things because a crew member did the final work. I still walk every house. Ten minutes of walkthrough saves hours of cleanup later.