except for an electrician for minor work I didn't have any trouble. roof and HVAC were done soon after we signed the contract

Have had no issues at all. But it's really contingent on the scope of the work that is to be done.

Parents just had roof replaced on their house in Bergen County. Took 2 business days and no labor issues.

If you don’t mind, could you elaborate on the kid of work you had done?

In the houses within our cash budget, we’ve typically found homes that look like they haven’t been updated since the 70s. We like the open style home where you can see the kitchen, dining room and living room in the same space. So it would take a lot of removing walls in addition to updating counters and maybe even moving around appliances. Also retiling bathrooms and maybe replacing tubs.

We could however apply for a loan to cover the the amount we’d have to pay after a cash down payment. I know interest rates are crazy but it might be worth the costs to find the perfect house and not deal with workers who may overcharge or totally screw us.

Not sure what it’s like now but I redid my whole house during the pandemic. Labor wasn’t an issue, the lead times on the materials were the biggest setbacks. Our kitchen cabinets took over 6 months to come in.

Not the original commenter, but my dad is a contractor in central Jersey and I do all of his contracts and invoicing. He’s been booked solid throughout COVID and his only issues have been increased cost and availability of materials. I know for some bathroom and exterior jobs he’s had to wait longer than usual for supplies to come in; same goes for appliances. He’s been able to keep his help and subcontracting positions filled, too. He ends up encountering some of those “ghosted” customers/homeowners so I think the bigger issue in that regard is trusting your contractor and getting multiple bids. Good luck in your house hunt! I recently moved back to the area after nearly a decade in the PNW…there’s nowhere like central Jersey!

I have two houses on my block that have major remodels going on. One is a gut job and the other is adding an addition. Neither of them can be occupied while the work is being done. The gutted house has consistent workers - not every day but several times a week. The addition house has seen no action in awhile. I don’t know why. Both houses started the work in the fall, the gut job will be completed way before the addition

Depends on the job. It seems like there is so much work out there that contractors can be pretty picky and take jobs that have the best balance of work involved/profitability. If you have a really big job don’t be surprised if you get quoted out the wazoo because they likely think they will be better off picking up a few smaller jobs instead.

No issues with plumbing or roofing timing, gold medal is basically available 24/7 but you pay a premium for that

Central Jersey architect/GC here. Subcontractors are busy but no real issue finding people to do the work. Prices have been normalizing, too. If you can, order everything and have as much as you can on site before you start, don't create any excuses for gaps in construction on your end. Make sure you get a construction schedule and ideally a selection schedule, too, before you sign with anyone. Try and choose people who are local, I'm turning down almost any construction related work that's more than 30 minutes from my house. There's enough work where I don't need to spend two hours a day in a car, I'm sure I'm not alone.

This year we did 2 full bathrooms and a water heater in Bergen County. It took 3 months from signing the first contract to start work (mostly due to ordering the vanity). First bathroom was done in a month. Once that finished we signed the next contract for bathroom #2 after waiting a month for the proposal.

Work started another month later by the same crew— however it took 2 months to mostly complete due to the scope of work. The shower glass took an additional month to manufacture, so make it 3 months total. At the end I asked the plumber subcontractor to swap out our water heater— he came back 2 weeks after the bathroom was completed. We also utilized the bathroom carpenter to replace a garage entry door and a front storm door.

Both bathrooms totaled ~$55k but all materials were readily available. We bought all the tile ourselves, and ordered the plumbing fixtures directly from Build.com after verifying specs with GC.

The key is finding a good GC with reliable subcontractors and building a relationship with them. These same guys did our kitchen in 2019 (3 month job around $85k).

Getting contractors for small jobs is hell. If you have a large scale remodel it should be easier.

I'm in NJ, having trouble finding contractors for smaller upgrades/fixes but if you are looking to make a large renovation you'll probably be fine.

I would recommend talking with your real estate agent for contractor recommendations. A good agent will have a list and should be able to provide you one or more recommendations for what ever work you need to have done.

Get an engineer to perform inspections for you, especially if you are thinking about removing walls and re-routing plumbing and electrical. Those walls may be bearing walls and could weaken the structure of your house. You should be getting inspections anyway. It is money well spent, even if you do not buy the house.

Here is a tip. You may be able to get a rider on your insurance to cover the replacement of the waste line from the house to the street. A couple of $ a month can save you $10K down the road.

We moved here from Florida and it’s a different world. 6 estimates for finishing a basement 4 never even showed up. Same thing when trying to get a fence.

Thank you. Any tips you can give on finding a good contractor?

Referrals from people you know or neighbors is a good place to start. Once you have a recommendation then you want to make sure the contractor is a good communicator and you have a contract after receiving a proposal. It is tough because some great contractors have terrible internet presence…while some 5 star google review contractors sub their work out to subpar contractors and they reward people to leave top reviews.

I suggest making a list of projects and tackle them in phases. Huge renovations tend to have little details get lost. Working one bathroom at a time (like we did) ensured we had things like wood blocking in the walls exactly where we wanted towel bars and tp holders to go (way sturdier than a drywall anchor).

Here’s some of our projects: https://imgur.com/gallery/65aX3dU

Thanks for sharing! Your house looks exactly what I want. May have to find the comment after buying a house down the road and ask who your person is…

Sure! I’m pretty sure they serve central NJ too. I’ve got a couple different reddit posts on r/homeimprovement that I can share of the kitchen and laundy room too

It’s been pretty bad. We hired contractors in June 2020 for a deck replacement, excavation, patio, finished basement with bathroom, and patio door egress. Things started ok, the deck work and excavation got done within a year, but we heard a lot about the costs going up. The trex decking took a while, but it got here. Pavers were not an issue.

The bigger problem was my contractor is from the area that got it by that hurricane a year or 2 ago, and he got all kinds of government contracts to fix the damage. He kinda ghosted me, and the quotes from the local guys to finish what was left were insane. 1 guy quoted us 10k for a half split when the basement already had 4 heat ducts he just missed. We owed the contractor maybe 30k of the 95k we contracted for, and estimated ran 60-120k. It was pretty depressing. Especially with the hole cut out of the foundation/basement wall for the patio doors being covered with a plastic tarp for almost 2 years…

I wanted to redo the pavers around the pool, so I basically rehired my first contractor to do that job to match the patio. He doubled the price on me, but it came with the caveat that he also finish the basement, which is now about 95% done. Just waiting on a plumber any day now for that basement bathroom. My guy has used a lot of subcontractors. It seems like the same sub crew never show up, but his regular guys are solid.

My town recently contacted me because the building permits are 2.5 years old and we haven’t called for final inspections. The guy that came said there are a lot of places where the contractors bailed or the owners ran out of money. As a lawyer, I can tell you we study how to sue contractors in property class- a mandatory core class for all first year law students- because it happens so often.

We were fortunate to had purchased a newly renovated, gutted inside and outside home this past August.

By choice we had the entire interior repaired since I hated the color but other than that we only need electrical work to get a Tesla charger into the garage and that's it.

I'm so glad we didn't go the route of purchasing a home just to have it worked on because of these contractor issues. Definitely didn't need the headaches so we were very fortunate.

@jeabers you can try Consider It Done NJ they were very helpful. I believe they are located in central NJ

I’m starting to lean towards this - I don’t want to deal with the headache of finding workers and praying they won’t screw us. It’s tough because we have a lot of cash to be able to afford a modest house up front (roughly $500k) and it would be awesome to not take out a mortgage - but if we’re going to spend ~$200k in renovations then we might as well spend that for a move in ready house.

We were very fortunate since most of the other homes we saw did need some kind of work and whatnot thus we needed to find a contractor as well.

Since the house was gutted in and out and the seller renovated it for more than a year it worked out for us to have a move in ready home.

I feel for those needing a contractor since it's as if you're at their mercy and they can pick and choose the jobs they'll accept. Good luck and best wishes.