There's an ad on Craigslist looking for a Land Surveyor

[sniffa]

The person states that they have a current bid of $800 (obviously from a pirate surveyor which hurts the industry) but is looking for a better deal. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

His description of what he's looking for is severely lacking. That being said, I may put in an offer for $600 if he's just looking for grades. Sadly, if someone made an offer that low it's a sign of the economy - it's from someone laid off or not working 40 hours (which is quite common right now).


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To Land Surveyors:

I'm converting a single house sitting on a 2 family zoning into 2 family. The works are described under Contractor's part. I already have a quote for surveying work of $800. I'm looking for a better bid. so please contact me if you're able to give me a better quote.


To Plumber and Electrician:

Based on the works described under Contractor's part, please give me a quote for your works and we'll go from there.

To Contractors with EXPERIENCES in EXCAVATING, FOUNDATION AND CONCRETE WORKS:

I have a crawl space under a kitchen of 14' x 14' and an unfinished basement. I want to excavate the crawl space to 15' x 22' to build a laundry room with proper footing and foundation wall to support a new kitchen (15' x 22') in place of the old kitchen and add a playroom (15' x 22') right on top of the new built kitchen.

Please get back to me with your work experiences and work references if you're serious and we'll set up a time to meet to go over in more details.

Thank you,

Mike




* Location: Dorchester MA 02125
* Compensation: We'll meet at my house to go over the works and costs and we'll go from there. Thanks
* Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

[KamaAina]

1. I keep getting messages from my local job site

from a land surveying company. I just got one this weekend for 'Chief of Party", which sounds about right. :party:

But whatever would you do with the economist-to-be? Not to mention the meow people...

[AlCzervik]

2. he's going to poop his pants when he finds out out much that whole job will

be.

[LeftyMom]

3. Or what it will look like when it's done if he tries to nickel and dime the whole thing.

:rofl:

[AlCzervik]

4. and i'm sure he'll try and cut every corner possible.

the guy that owned my sisters house before him had it built, my Dad who is real estate developer went through it before she bought it and gave it a huge thumbs down. She has had more problems with her house, new roof after 8 years, he didn't put gutters on the back so she had ice dams and then the roof started leaking behind the walls and the plumbing is a total joke.

[sniffa]

5. Here's the thing about this ad after thinking about it and rereading it

My initial reaction was that the guy didn't know what he's getting into - he has a fixed cost in his mind and is shopping around to meet it. He has no idea about Boston's zoning laws as well as potential liability for not doing it correctly. We had one client like that - he was given some money from his parents to start his own business or whatever and he chose to buy a lot in Alston with a building on it, with the intent to tear down the building, put up 2 new buildings containing 4 condos. It was a total disaster. He paid an architect to design the 2 cookie cutter houses and the parking lot and then had us do a property line survey. After doing the survey he started asking us for more work as he found out he needed certain plans made and stamped to move forward. As it turned out, the houses and parking lot he had designed would never be approved because they failed zoning requirements. He also didn't know he had to have a self-contained drainage system (he was planning on tying into the city's catch basins). So began a daily plea(s) from him asking for a break because he didn't have the money. He also refused to redesign the houses - most likely because he sank a big chunk of money into it; architects get 50-100 times what surveyors are budgeted for. Lawyers get even more but they tend to put the liability on us... which in turn has caused us (usually, but there are some exceptions) to put multiple disclaimers all over records we produce.

But then rereading the post - his first line mentions zoning casually in an offhanded manner. This makes me think he knows what he's doing and is trying to get thousands of dollars worth of work on the dirt cheap. That happens in good times but in bad times, you'll have desperate people agreeing to their price and then being forced by contract to spend more time and money that you won't be compensated for.