3 Tips for Choosing a Tradie for Your Home Repairs

Finding a tradie that you can rely on is often half the battle when it comes to home renovations. Tradies are everywhere, each promising the same quality outcomes but rarely delivering. Whether it’s inflated quotes, communication issues or extended time delays – you always want to hire the right person for the job but doing so is often easier said than done.

A team of dodgy tradies can leave you high and dry with an exorbitant bill at the end, which is the last thing you want when you’re trying to make money with a renovation. So, to help you find a quality tradie that you can trust – here are our top tips:

1. Find The Right Person For The Job

Family and Friends: Naturally, when you’re asking for recommendations you turn to people you can trust. If anyone you know has had work done ask them about their experiences with their tradies. Negative or positive – it’s all good information to help you make a decision.

Online Reviews: There are heaps of online resources at your disposal. Picking the first tradie you find on Google is not a good way to go about it because all it really says is that their marketing is well-done. Go into Google Reviews to see what people are saying about them. This will give you a far better indication of what they’re like to work with. Another good place to hit up is Facebook community boards – don’t ask for direct work (otherwise you’ll attract a flock of unqualified apprentices), rather, ask for recommendations to help you choose between possible candidates.

Local Suppliers: Another good idea is to ask the professionals within the industry such as local hardware stores and suppliers. They have a lot of experience with local tradies who use their products and it’s unlikely that they’d recommend someone unreliable because they wouldn’t want to be associated with them.
 

2. Get a Fair Quote

If you have no idea what the going price is for a particular job, the best thing to do is get a couple of quotes so you can compare. You don’t want to be hundreds of dollars out of pocket just because you believed the first quote.

But just because one tradie is charging $100 less than the others, it doesn’t mean that they’re the right people for the job either. Cheap quotes can mean cheap work, which is important to keep in mind when weighing up your options.

Another tip for comparing quotes is to ensure you’re providing the same brief each time. It’s no good asking for three separate things and expecting a fair quote comparison!

3. Communicate!

Renovations are a stressful time for anyone, with so much going on – it’s easy to drop the communication ball with your tradies. Not mentioning a simple detail about what you want can put you in-line for some big headaches and expensive fixes down the track. Your communication needs to be completely clear and concise for your tradies, so they understand exactly what you want. Having a comprehensive renovation action plan in place that you’ve gone through with your tradies is a great way to avoid any communication errors and an overall more streamlined renovation. It’s also handy to have if your tradie turns around and attempts to blame you for an error they’ve made.