I saw the above company running an ad in Detroit News last Sunday. Interesting concept and if it works that would a whole lot of contractor headaches for Michigan real estate investors. Basically think Amazon reviews by Michigan residents but instead of books think contractors - electricans, plumbers, landscapers,

Homeowners post reviews of the contractors that they have used and now the next homeowner has a better idea of what they are about to get when they get that contractor. There have been opinion sites like Epinions.com, Amazon and Ebay do a kick butt job of asking and getting feedback on their sellers / buyers and products.

We the user pay a $5.95 per month fee to access the database. Sincce they just opened the Detroit chapter on April 25, 2006, they are offering a free one year trial. I am going to create an account and play with it. Although I dont know, being so new, on the quantity and quality of reviews. If anybody has previous experience with them, drop me a line by posting a comment to this post, so we would all know how good or not good this service is.

But apart from that - a whole lot of contractors of issues could be avoided by asking for 3 references (nobody does that) and getting a contract with an outlined of what, where, when and how (well nobody wants to do that either too).

Do the above two and you just cut your contractor issues by 95%.