Contractor Red Flags: What to Walk Away From

The warning signs arrive in a predictable order, and most of them show up before you have spent a dollar. Sorted by when you see them, they are far easier to catch than they are as one long list.

Below is the sequence, from the first phone call to the third week of work, plus a section on the things that look alarming and are usually fine.

I match Maine homeowners with three screened contractors so this list has less to do. That runs across general contracting statewide and the builders I send people to in Portland. Free, and no obligation to hire any of them.

What are the red flags at first contact?

They came to you. The single strongest signal on this page. Legitimate contractors in Maine have more work than they can take and do not spend their afternoons knocking on doors.

Leftover material from a job down the road. There is no leftover material. This is a script, and it has been the same script for forty years.

No physical address. A mobile number and a magnetic door sign is a business you cannot find in three months.

A company name that is nearly somebody else's. Names close to an established local outfit are chosen on purpose.

They noticed something from the road. Your roof, your chimney, your foundation. Somebody who diagnosed a problem from a moving vehicle has a sales process, not a diagnosis.

Out of state plates after a storm. Maine gets storm chasers after every serious wind or ice event. Some are legitimate. Most are gone by spring, and so is the warranty.

Which red flags show up at the site visit?

They do not measure anything. A price arrived at without a tape measure is a number somebody made up.

They will not go in the crawl space or up in the attic. That is where the real information is, and a builder who skips it is going to find out about your problems at the same time you do.

Everything is easy. Your project is not easy. Somebody who says it is has not looked hard enough or has decided that agreeing with you is the shortest route to a signature.

A price on the spot. A real estimate takes a few days because it involves calling suppliers and subs. A number handed to you at the kitchen table came from a gut feeling.

Pressure disguised as a favour. A discount that expires tonight, a crew that happens to be free next week, a price that only holds if you decide now. Urgency is a sales technique and it exists to stop you calling anybody else.

What red flags appear in a written quote?

One line and one number. "Kitchen remodel, $54,000." That document tells you nothing, protects nobody, and cannot be compared against anything.

No exclusions listed at all. Every honest quote has exclusions. A quote without them is not more inclusive, it is less honest.

No allowances named on a job with finishes you have not chosen yet. That means the number is built on assumptions you never saw.

A price far below the other two. Not automatically wrong, and worth investigating rather than accepting. The usual causes are a missed scope item, a thin allowance, or a plan to catch up in change orders. Ask which.

No start or completion date. Maine's contract law requires those dates in a written home construction contract, so their absence is both a warning and a compliance problem.

I go through the anatomy of a proper one on what a proper written quote contains.

Which contract terms are red flags?

There is no contract. Over $3,000 in labor and materials, Maine requires a written home construction contract. Anybody proposing to work on a handshake past that is proposing something the state does not allow.

A change order clause you cannot find. State law requires the contract to address how changes get handled. If you cannot locate it, ask.

No warranty statement. Also required, and its absence tells you what happens when something fails in month four.

Blanks left to be filled in later. Sign a document with empty fields and you have signed whatever eventually goes in them.

They resist the Attorney General's model contract. The Maine Attorney General publishes a free model home construction contract that meets every requirement. Plenty of builders use their own and theirs is fine. Somebody who objects to a contract on principle is objecting to the part that protects you.

Which money requests are contractor red flags?

This is the category where homeowners lose the most, so it deserves its own section.

A deposit past a third. Maine caps the initial down payment on a home construction contract at one third of the price. A larger request is not a negotiation, it is outside the rule, and the reasoning behind it is on the legal ceiling on a deposit.

Cash only, or a cheque to a person. Payment to an individual rather than a business leaves you without a paper trail and frequently means no business exists.

Payment tied to dates rather than to completed work. Draws should release when a stage is finished, not when a Friday arrives.

A request to pay a supplier directly. Sometimes framed as saving you the markup. What it usually means is a contractor whose credit at the yard has run out.

Asking for the next draw early. Once is a cash flow hiccup. Twice is a business using your money to finish somebody else's job, and yours is next in that queue.

What red flags appear once work starts?

Days with nobody on site and no explanation. Gaps are normal in construction. Unexplained gaps are not, and the difference is a phone call.

The crew you met is not the crew that arrived. Ask where the lead carpenter you were introduced to went.

Change orders arriving verbally. Anything that changes the price gets written down and signed before it happens. Every time, including the small ones.

Work getting covered up faster than you can look at it. Insulation and drywall going in the day after rough-in, before an inspection you were told about, is worth stopping to ask about.

Materials that do not match the contract. A different product than the one specified, without a conversation first.

They stop answering. The most serious one on this page, and it has its own guide: what to do when a crew stops coming.

What looks like a red flag but is not?

Half the homeowners I talk to are worried about the wrong things, so this section matters as much as the ones above.

A long wait to start. The best builders in any Maine town are booked months out. A contractor available on Monday in June is available for a reason.

Subcontracting. Almost every general contractor subs out plumbing and electrical, and many sub out drywall, tile and paint. That is the normal structure of the trade. What matters is whether they use the same people repeatedly.

A deposit for special order materials. Custom windows and long lead time items are real money out the door before your first day. Inside the legal cap and documented, this is legitimate.

Refusing to give a firm price on an unknown. A builder who says the rot behind the siding gets priced once it is open is being honest. The one who guesses is not being braver, just less accurate.

No polished website. Some of the best builders in this state have a truck, a phone and a twenty year waiting list. Marketing quality and construction quality are unrelated.

Pushing back on your plan. Somebody telling you the layout will not work, or that the budget will not reach the spec, is doing the job you hired them for. Agreement is not competence.

A one person operation. For the right scale of project, a solo carpenter who does the work himself is often the best value available. Ask about insurance rather than about headcount.

Which red flags should end it immediately?

Most of this page is a reason to ask another question. These four are not.

A door to door pitch about leftover material. A demand for cash up front. A refusal to put a job over $3,000 in writing. And a certificate of insurance that will not come from the agent.

Any one of those, on its own, and the answer is no. There is no price that makes them worth it, because the price is not what you would be paying.

What should you do when you see one?

Slow down. Almost every bad outcome in this trade traces back to a decision made faster than it needed to be.

Ask directly about the thing that bothered you and listen to the shape of the answer. Plenty of red flags dissolve on contact: the missing exclusions list exists and was not attached, the deposit request was about a window order and can be documented.

If it does not dissolve, you are not obligated to explain yourself. "I have decided to go a different direction" is a complete sentence and you owe nobody more than that.

Then go back to your other two quotes, which is the reason for having three.

Frequently asked questions

Is a low bid always a red flag? No. It is a question. Compare the low bid's scope and allowances against the others line by line and you will usually find the reason, and sometimes the reason is that they are genuinely leaner.

What if the contractor was recommended by a friend? A recommendation is a good starting point and not a substitute for the checks. Your friend's project was a different project, possibly in a different year, and businesses change.

Should I be worried if they only take checks? No. Checks are normal and traceable. What matters is that the cheque is made out to a business, not to an individual, and that you have a written contract behind it.

Is a door to door contractor ever legitimate? Occasionally, and it is not worth the odds. If somebody knocks and the pitch interests you, take the name, close the door, and check them out on your own timeline instead of theirs.

They have great reviews. Is that enough? Reviews are the easiest signal to inflate. Two detailed reviews describing a real problem and how it was resolved carry more weight than fifty short ones.

What if I already signed and now I am worried? Read the contract for its cancellation terms and the dates, gather everything in writing, and talk to a Maine attorney before you make decisions about money. This page is general information, not legal advice.

How can you skip most of this checking?

Everything above is the screening you would otherwise do yourself, and it is genuinely doable. It just takes weeks and a lot of unreturned calls.

My alternative is that the three contractors I put in front of you have already been through insurance, reference and financial checks before you meet them. That is a screening process rather than a guarantee, and you should still read this page before you sign anything.

Tell me what you are building and what town you are in, and I will send three names.

More on hiring: how to hire a contractor in Maine · the questions that surface this early