Why Contractors Won't Return Your Calls

hey in today's video we are going to be talking about why you can't get a contractor for your renovation why nobody even answers the phone or responds to your emails and then what you can do about it if you need renovations done in your house first of all in order to understand what's going on with renovation contractors you need to think like a renovation contractor that's what i was for 35 years i was a gc i did renovations i spent a little time in the new housing market but not much okay i didn't do too much of the new home construction i liked the people i liked the sales aspect i like interaction so i tended to go towards being on the project and helping people walk through the process and i kind of enjoyed that aspect of the relationship so i understand renovation contractors in the way they think okay and they're a very strange crew these are guys that have got talent they've got physical ability they're running businesses they wear about a dozen hats it's very strange they're all very entrepreneurial generally speaking they make their living long term by keeping customers happy which can really really affect the bottom line or you have to be really aggressive in your nature with dealing with customers and as the market swings one way or the other is it a is it a contractor market is a homeowner market who favors what attitudes and adjustments need to be made on both parties okay right now we're in a time when if you need a renovation you want to pick up the phone if you can get in touch with anybody they're going to tell you you're two years out two years for a renovation seems like an awful long time when a nice gtv they renovate a bathroom in 30 minutes so well let's go through why two years there's a lot of factors but before we go into the factors on renovation i want to talk about construction as a whole because it is an industry it's like any other industry like mining or forestry or agriculture we're dealing with a labor shortage and we're going to deal with it as a whole because it's about the same in every one of these industries okay just so you know we're going to show you some trends we're going to show you some hope and then we're going to talk about how renovations is different than construction and we're going to get all that information the next few minutes to you so you can understand how to position yourself how to manage your expectations and how to protect yourself from getting a lousy job that you'll have to have renovated again in a few years all right this is key so first of all let me grab my pointer stick we're going to take a look at a long-term trend from year 2000 to current and then this is my prediction okay for a number of homes built per 100 000 people these are american numbers because it makes a lot of sense i did the research guys canadian numbers are almost identical it's amazing how much our two economies and our two societies mirror each other in a lot of these numbers so don't be worried about it but here's the deal back before 2006 this is 2008 this is obvious okay 2006 a lot of news articles and a lot of news reports refer to 2006 because it's what we call the good old days this is when the country was growing people were entering the job market everybody was building everything was nice and steady everything was going great until we woke up one morning realized the country was being built on junk loans everything crashed all right and then this is the switch i'm talking about with contracting here okay contractors could charge almost anything they wanted for a renovation because there was again a shortage of contractors and then down here the same guy three weeks earlier was waking up going geez i need to feed my kids all of my retirement was also wiped out in the stock market remember renovation contractors are independent contractors they don't have pension plans the only money that they've got saved up they were told to put it in a mutual fund or a stock market 401ks mutual funds they were eradicated they lost everything now they were waking up in the morning and they were working for food they were just trying to keep the lights on i know that's sad but this is the reality these guys have had a real big boom a real big bust and in 2000 to now we're talking about 40 of the workforce for baby boomers now right now baby boomers are 57 to 74 years old and back here this is 20 years ago so they were 37 to 54 years old so that's what the baby boomers 40 of the labor force in that 120 year period they were driving all of this they lost everything and so then understanding the construction mindset and their financial situation there's a lot of baby boomers that had to stay in the business as it recovered and then covet hit and we had a huge spike in construction we all know about this one of the things you're going to find when you take a look back over the last couple years is that everything was disrupted materials got expensive everybody was staying home nobody was traveling they all needed an office at home to stay working at home the need to have an outdoor living space drove through the roof and everybody's priorities changed so while the industry's changed everything everybody was doing changed so we've had a construction boom we've had a diy boom we've had a work from home boom we've had a i need a bigger house boom because if you're a family of four one daughter one son and you have a three bedroom home well now you need an office you either renovate a space you do an addition or you buy a new house interest rates have been rock bottom low and so that's why the housing boom everybody's trying to upgrade because they they don't see the future where they're not working from home i mean why would you want to take your job drive back and forth eat out at lunch all the time you lose half your day and half your money just in the cost of car insurance gas restaurant bills staying at a home is very financially lucrative so now that we've got everybody can work through the internet the whole business model is changing and in construction we saw the same thing so a lot of guys left commercial and went into residential construction all right and that made up a lot of the the growth that's going on here because we can only grow as fast as we have people working so here's what happened in covit and we're predicting that it's going to stay relatively steady because we'd like to see more growth but we're thinking steady and here's the problem let's talk about construction labor and the average age of the worker all right the second half of this graph is construction labor and we are dealing with 11 we're going to call it 12 million people in north america or canada u.s at least okay that's significant and when you think about that 12 million people in construction that seems like a lot but put this in perspective there are two million licensed real estate agents in the united states alone and if you think about it if an agent can sell a house one house a week that means the same amount of construction it would take one guy six weeks to build a house by an entire self that ain't happening we can sell them faster than we can build them okay and so that's part of the problem now look at this construction labor we're going to call it even 12. 16 to 24 year olds yeah people who went god i hate school i'm not going to go to college i'm going into the workforce 1 million of them okay that's awesome but that's a 10-year grouping so every 10-year grouping is represented evenly here let's take a look at the 65 and overs the last the dying breed all right the guys that got eradicated who are still working today because they couldn't afford to retire still 640 000. if you add the canadians it's 700 000 people over the age of 65 going to work with the lunch box with calloused hands right bad back sore knees throwing ruined shoulders and they're still producing cheers to every one of you you guys are my rock stars now 55 to 64. here's the rest of the baby boom right here almost 2 million in this grouping there's a good chunk of guys who've already left remember in the last couple years the stock market has gone through the roof so the last little bit of savings that this group had and all the work they've done the last little while if they've invested well right they've regained all their losses and they're like sayonara if you're 58 years old and you're part of the baby boom and you've been making a killing in construction the last couple years and you've invested it well you've recovered all of your losses the last thing you want to do is hang around waiting for that to disappear again so they sell their house they move to florida they buy themselves a double wide and a cute little golf cart and they're done all right they're retired the next group is the 45 to 54 year olds look at this 2.3 million of them all right and it's consistent almost consistent every every decade we have a very consistent hiring in our business okay this isn't like wild crazy this isn't scary and it wasn't here either there's probably about a half a million guys aged 55 and over who've already retired probably similar to the guys that couldn't afford to okay but take a look at this the 16 to 24 year olds only 1 million does anybody see a problem here this is why we would talk about there's five guys retiring and two guys joining and when i use the guys word i'm using it loosely bottom line is only five percent of electricians and plumbers are female only three percent are carpenters okay and we call them all guys on the job site so don't give me a heck and we're proud of that too and it needs to grow to be honest with you these are great paying careers when you take a look at this trend all right we're running into a real problem because who is it your wife hey baby hi honey how are you i'm in the middle of filming a video actually we're running into a real problem and that might be on the surface and here's what i'm thinking i'm thinking a lot of the folks in the 16 to 24 year old range they've been listening to all of the media and the social media and everybody complaining who had to get a job at starbucks because they went and got an education first couldn't get a job without university degree that they had to pay for became coffee baristas went into food service waiters waitresses cooks all that kind of jazz trying to pay back their student loans i think a lot of those folks and if you've been around any town lately you'll realize everyone's hiring for everything in the entry level job market because i think a lot of them left that and realized finally the message has been getting out this is an old number this number is based on about the same time that all of the unemployment benefits ended for staying at home doing nothing so now we're in a post covered world we're going to call it please can we get there this i believe is going to be more in the two to two five range again one of the reasons i'm thinking that is because how in the world the people who were living on minimum wage don't get benefits since september it is now spring time it's time to go back to work folks if you're not in this group yet and you're wondering about a career get into construction they're dying to train you and have you on board it's a great gig okay my goodness by the way this curve this is how many people how many homes are built for every hundred thousand people this is the curve we're not going to get back here this is a baby boom reality we'll never see this again unless immigration goes to five or ten million people a year we'll never see this again this is why i think it's going to flatten out this is why i think construction as a whole is going to be under a lot of pressure over the next little while now let's get into the pressure and then we're going to talk about why nobody answers the phone and what you can do about it first of all let's talk about why you can't get a contractor here's the totality of construction labor half of these guys are new construction and half of them are on renaults they do remodeling and renovation work for sake of argument it's not exactly that case okay there's also a third category which is remediation and restoration and and they move back and forth depending on the trends and the disasters but generally speaking new home construction and renovations are two different kinds of people new home construction people don't like people they like to do their work and go home and get paid renovation people like people i think there's more money in renovation but there's a lot more headaches a lot more stress as well so guys get in the trades they try both and they figure out what works best for them now in the renovation market here's the totality of the renovation contractors of all of the guys in renovations all right about 30 are owners and the rest of them are employees all right let's draw that in and of the employees about a third of them are very skilled labor okay they've got great relationship they're managing jobs they're at the foreman okay they've been around few years they're in that 35 to 45 range generally speaking employees of this group are ambitious and what did they do they all left their jobs to become owners so now the construction world and renovations looks like this half owners half employees that doesn't answer the question well if there's the same number of people in the business how come i can't get a contractor how come nobody answers the phone and here's why half of the people in this are owners all right half of them have new businesses there's no google seo on new businesses they're on page 49 of your google search okay they don't exist to you and the ones that are in the business that google is presenting as a viable option are so busy they don't answer the phone they're not going to pay someone money to sit there and answer the phone and say i'm sorry we can't take your business if you do find somebody they go i'm busy for two years it's a basic response because a they don't want your business or b if you give them a response of i don't care what it costs i need a renovation they will cancel a contract bump you up they'll take good care of you because it's all about the money right now now the nobody answers the phone business is actually kind of an old thing in contracting even in 2006 that was the case now what could you do about it this is the real issue because you've got a group of owners here half of them are trying to find you and the other half don't have anything to do with you there are three things that you can do about it [Applause] number one first thing you can do about it advertise your project to that group of new business owners who don't know how to connect the dots with you yet remember these guys are new in business they might know their trade they might be very skilled they might be licensed they might have taken all kinds of installation courses they might be really good contractors but they're lousy businessmen and women they don't know how to find you so find them throw an ad in the paper throw an ad on kijiji do something advertise the fact that you're in business because business is a two-way street and if you advertise you might be really surprised that someone will call you back and say hey that's great now this may not be the best option you still have to find out who these people are how long you've been in business that may or may not be scary but the point is this go visit them on their current job site talk to the current customer all right you'll find out a lot about this person really really quickly are they clean are they organized do they have staff and is the current customer happy if yes yes and yes it might be a better option than waiting two years number two you can wait a couple more years now two years might turn into five remember half of the homes in north america are built pre-1980 they have aluminum wiring they've got asbestos issues they've got galvanized steel plumbing or you know like they got antiquated hvac systems wrapped in asbestos the insulation's bad if it even exists they got foundation issues you can't just walk in there and put lipstick on that pig so your two-year-old might wait till five years because the contractors are going to work for everybody who's paying top dollar first and until we run out of people who have enough money to renovate an old home who don't want to pay over market price for it because truth is paying over market for a renovation is cheaper than paying over market for a brand new home think about it and that's the situation right there the other thing that's going on here can i just say one of the reasons you're waiting two to five years because a lot of those contractors who have businesses have some money stashed away have some reputation have some credit they got out of renovation they're not working for you anymore they're working for themselves just go ahead and do yourself a favor go on to zillow all right and search houses for sale in your area and there's some older houses and a lot of 70s and 80s and stuff just on the outskirts of town and they don't look all that great from the outside but if you look at the inside they're completely remodeled right and they all look like a home depot catalog okay because the contractors went and bought a house and flipped it instead of working for you because flipping that house had better money because the market was skyrocketing i'll just say this before all the craziness happened a good quality bathroom renovation custom bath was 25 to 35 000 bucks right now if that's the only thing left with your house that needs to be fixed and a renovation contractor said i'll do that for 50 000. you would choke on it but he'd rather buy your house do that bathroom and make 150. he's not stupid they know the market they know their value so right now either you pay big money for your renovation or he's going to buy your house from you when you sell it he'll renovate it himself because he's not looking to be employed by anybody right now and then we got one last option guys one last saving grace diy and for a lot of you i know that's scary and if that's you thanks for watching the video up to this point but for everybody else think about this the labor force has joined the market from 16 to 24. how much do they know about anything do you think you might have enough life experience ability to learn ability to be comprehensive show up sober to your own job site at home and and be confident if you have the right instruction right of course you can i'm a firm believer that everybody watching this video is their best contractor for their own job you can do anything you want to set your mind to you can do a fantastic job we're here to help so make sure you check us out we have a membership program set up for just a few bucks a month you can join our membership be part of our live shows ask questions we have a forum you can send us pictures and i will personally answer your questions and take a look at those pictures and help you diagnose problems make recommendations we have great videos that teach you how to do the renovations yourself if you're not familiar with it we've got videos that are hours and hours long so that you can learn start to finish how to be successful in your own renovation i think you should maybe take a look at this option because moving into the future i'm not seeing a lot of room for either the prices of the houses to come down now they might not go through the roof anymore they might plateau but the value add of a good renovation contractor these guys are basically got the midas touch now they can take an old piece of junk and make it worth gold and as long as they can continue to renovate and flip their own houses they're not going to work for you which makes the renovation market really really small okay learn to do it yourself and make the money if a 25 000 bathroom innovation costs about 8 grand in material and is worth 50 to 70 000 on the increase in value in your home you've got to be nuts not to do it yourself okay you can afford to do it three times if you had to get it right all right enough said this is what's going on the market it's crazy it's not going to get normal for a long long long long time diy learning how to do things yourself makes you incredibly valuable to your own house and your own financial situation alright consider this don't move don't look for that fourth bedroom build a shed in the backyard making an office do an addition on the house renovate part of your basement sound proof it have your own office at home resist the temptation to want to buy something new and move you've got room in your house already for what you're gonna need okay so consider renovating versus buying it'll save you a ton of money cheers until next time

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 150,502

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, homerenovisiondiy, contractor, contracting, how to hire a contractor, plumbing, electrical, framing, diy, do it yourself, should i hire a contractor, skilled labour, home renovation tips, hiring a general contractor, home improvement, finding good contractors, how to find a good general contractor, how to hire a good contractor, tile, painting, how to paint like a professional

Id: ZStWYJxE2JA

Length: 19min 21sec (1161 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2022