Guide · Hiring
Two bids on the same house can be thousands apart and both honest, because they are not describing the same work. These questions make them comparable, and the answers tell you more than the number does.
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Something our own numbers show
We buy search traffic in this market and we read every term that reaches us, which means we can see something a homeowner cannot: the vocabulary splits the audience before anybody speaks.
Type painting and roughly ninety-seven percent of that traffic is people doing it themselves or shopping for product. Type painters, painting contractor or painting company and you are in the hiring pool, where about seven in ten searches are commercial property rather than houses.
It explains something that otherwise looks like bad luck: you searched, you got a page of results, and half of them were paint brands, tutorials and companies that do warehouses. Nothing was wrong with your search. The words simply pointed somewhere else.
Practical version
The list
None of these are trick questions, and a company that does this work every day answers all twelve without pausing. The point is not to catch anyone out. It is that the answers are comparable, which a bottom-line number never is.
The number and the certificate, by email, before the visit. "We are licensed and insured" is a sentence; the documents are the answer, and they arrive in minutes or they do not arrive.
A regular team, or whoever was available that morning. It is the single biggest predictor of whether the finish matches the sample you were shown.
Listen for washing, drying time, scraping, patching and caulk replacement. If the answer is short, the bid is short too, and the difference shows up later.
The wall must be dry through, not just to the touch. A company that has a real answer here has thought about it. A company that has not will coat it the same afternoon.
One heavy pass looks like two on the day and fades unevenly within a year. Being invited to look between coats is the cheapest quality control you will ever get.
Not just the brand. Lines within a brand are built for different exposure, and here that difference is everything.
The most useful question on the list. Wood repair, stucco repair, screen removal, gate and railing work, cabinet interiors. Get the exclusions in writing.
A firm written price, or an estimate that can move. Both exist honestly. What is not honest is presenting the second as the first.
What is due when, and what triggers each stage. Large cash deposits up front are the oldest warning sign in the trade.
What gets covered, how furniture and floors are handled, and whether the site is cleaned daily or once at the end.
Days on site, and what happens when it rains. Anyone promising a fixed exterior window in the wet season is promising something they do not control.
Who to call, for how long, and whether that is written down. Ask what a callback looks like in practice, not whether one exists in principle.
Answers that should worry you
Putting two bids side by side
Write the two proposals in two columns and fill in the same five rows: surfaces named, preparation described, coats promised, product line stated, exclusions listed. Any row that is blank on one side is not a saving, it is a difference in what you are buying.
Reviews are read the same way, for pattern rather than for score. Ten of them describing the same tidy crew tells you more than a hundred with no detail in them. Read the ones that mention mess and touch-ups, because those two predict how the fortnight will feel.
Then ask for one nearby address where recent outdoor work was done, and drive past it. This is the one trade whose result sits in public view.
Next
The next guide sorts the market into its four tiers and shows what each one is registered to do, which makes every question above land faster.
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