Key Insurance Checks Before Hiring a Home Repair Professional

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It’s a pretty massive gamble to hire a random guy off the internet to rip up your house.

It’s a pretty massive gamble to hire a random guy off the internet to rip up your house. You always hear those horror stories about a cheap worker drilling into a water pipe by accident and flooding a whole basement. When something goes wrong, you’re suddenly left wondering: are handyman contractors insured in Highlands Ranch, CO? If you don't ask that all-important question before they start swinging a hammer, you could be left footing the bill for a colossal disaster yourself.

Even guys who have been in the trades for thirty years make stupid mistakes or just have bad luck. A heavy metal ladder slips on a wet driveway. Or a heavy wrench lands just right on an expensive glass stovetop. If the person in your kitchen doesn’t have liability coverage of their own, your personal homeowner’s policy will take the hit.

Many people try to save fifty bucks by hiring the cheapest guy they can find on a local community message board. Usually those guys are incredibly cheap just because they won’t buy the expensive monthly commercial insurance policies. Yes, you might save a few bucks on the initial hourly rate, but you're taking on an absurd amount of financial risk just to fix a broken ceiling fan.

Property damage is a pain, but someone getting physically hurt on your property is a whole different legal nightmare. If someone without insurance falls off a step stool in your living room and breaks their ankle, they can actually sue you for the hospital bills. Suddenly you’re dealing with medical lawyers and court dates because you wanted some fresh paint in the hallway.

Before any work begins, you have to be brutally upfront and ask for their actual paperwork before they even walk a toolbox through the front door. It shows that they are running a real business, and a legitimate professional will be more than happy to show you their active certificate of insurance right there on the porch. If the guy gets strangely defensive about showing you the paperwork or starts making excuses, tell him to pack up and leave immediately.

Good liability coverage protects the physical structure of your house, your expensive belongings and the people who live in your house. So if a worker backs his heavy work truck into your brick mailbox by mistake, their insurance will cover it to rebuild it from the ground up. You don’t have to spend weeks fighting them in small claims court to get your money back.

It makes a world of difference when you're financially secure, and some stranger is ripping your plasterboard apart. When a neighbour is looking to get some work done, they might ask, Are handyman contractors insured in Highlands Ranch, CO? You tell them it is contingent upon who you hire. They thoroughly vet the person before any real physical work is done to the property. It’s their job.

Real professionals include the cost of their insurance in their normal hourly rates, which is why they charge a bit more. So that extra 20 bucks an hour is a cheap insurance policy for your peace of mind when they are working. You're paying for the assurance that if they break a window by accident, they will pay to replace it the very next day.

The point of getting those pesky chores done is to reduce your stress, not keep you up all night worrying about lawsuits. You’re covered if a pipe bursts, which just lets you sit on the couch and let the messy work be done. The whole idea of hiring a professional is that you don't have to worry about the horrible worst-case scenarios.

Conclusion

Never let anybody do heavy manual work at your property unless they can show that they've got a good insurance policy active. It's just not worth risking your entire savings account to get a squeaky door fixed a little cheaper. Pay the higher rate for a real professional and enjoy peace of mind.

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