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How to Vet a Contractor Before Letting Them Into Your Home
Knowing how to vet a contractor is a different skill than knowing how to check a license. A license tells you someone is legally allowed to do the work. It tells you nothing about whether you’ll be comfortable with their crew walking through your bedroom for three days, or whether the bid you got is realistic. That layer is on you to check.
Read reviews for patterns, not stars
A star average alone tells you almost nothing. What matters is the shape of the reviews underneath it.
Look for patterns across multiple reviews, not just the best or worst one. If several people independently describe the same problem — no-shows, scope creep, disappearing mid-job — that’s a pattern, not bad luck. And pay attention to how the company responds to a bad review. A defensive, blame-the-customer response tells you how they’ll treat you when something goes wrong on your job. A response that owns the issue and describes what they did about it tells you something better.
One more thing worth noticing: a cluster of five-star reviews posted within the same week or two, especially if they read similarly, is a signal worth slowing down for. It doesn’t automatically mean anything was faked, but it’s worth weighing against a normal, gradual spread of reviews built up over months and years.
Ask for references from a job like yours — and actually call them
A contractor who’s good at kitchens isn’t automatically good at your specific job. Ask for references from work that’s genuinely comparable to what you need done, not just any past client.
Then call them. Not text — call, and ask real questions: Did the crew show up when they said they would? Did the final price match the estimate, or did it creep? Would they hire this company again for a similar job? A reference list that’s hard to get, or that only produces one name, is itself information.
Confirm who’s actually going to show up
The person who bids the job and the crew who does the job are sometimes not the same people at all. Before you commit, ask directly:
- Are the workers employees of the company, or day labor brought in for the job?
- Does the company run background checks on people who’ll be inside a client’s home?
- Will the same crew be on-site for the whole job, or does it rotate day to day?
For a one-day job this matters less. For anything spanning multiple days where a crew has ongoing access to your house, it matters a lot, and a company that can’t answer clearly is telling you something.
What a real written estimate contains
A serious written estimate is specific: scope of work, what’s included and what isn’t, a price (or a clear pricing structure), and a timeframe. If a bid is vague on any of those — “we’ll figure out the scope once we’re in there,” no timeline, a price that’s a range with no explanation of what moves it — that vagueness is the finding, not a detail to overlook. The absence of a written estimate at all, for anything beyond a small job, is a reason to keep looking.
Comparing bids without just picking the lowest one
Get more than one bid whenever the job allows it. But don’t default to the lowest number — a bid that’s dramatically below the others usually means one of a few things downstream: corners get cut, the price grows once work starts and “surprises” get discovered, or the crew that shows up isn’t the one that was described. None of that is guaranteed, but a bid that’s an outlier on the low side deserves more questions, not fewer.
Deposits and payment
Some deposit before work begins is normal in this industry. What’s worth watching for is a deposit that’s disproportionate to the size of the job, or pressure to pay the full amount before any work has started. A company confident in its own work is usually comfortable being paid as the job progresses.
Extra scrutiny when a crew is unsupervised in a full house
Everything above applies to any home service job. It matters even more for jobs where a crew is working largely unsupervised in a house full of someone’s belongings — estate cleanouts, moves, and full-property clear-outs, where documents, jewelry, and things with sentimental or financial value are mixed in with everything else. The stakes for who’s actually showing up, and how well the company screens its people, go up accordingly.
Before crew day: a short checklist
A few minutes of prep before anyone arrives is worth more than trying to sort it out afterward:
- Remove or lock away important documents — deeds, financial paperwork, passports.
- Set aside medications somewhere separate from the general clear-out area.
- Pull jewelry and other small valuables out of drawers and closets before the crew starts.
- Photograph each room beforehand, so you have a record of what was there and its condition going in.
None of this assumes bad intent from anyone. It’s the same reason you’d walk a rental car before handing back the keys — a record protects everyone, including the crew.
Licensing and vetting are two different checks
If the job requires a licensed contractor, confirm that first — see how to check if a contractor is licensed in California for the CSLB lookup and what it actually tells you. Vetting is the layer on top of that: whether this specific company, with this specific crew, is one you want in your home.
If you’d rather not run all of this yourself, submit a request through SD Home Service Hub and get matched to a vetted San Diego provider instead of vetting a stranger from scratch.