May 8th, 2010
A New Way to Find Local Contractors
Becoming a first-time property owner is full of challenges: You have to become familiar with the tax consequences (and benefits) of home ownership, the joys (and annoyances) of home maintenance and the general feeling that you suddenly have a lot less free time because you are figuring out what type of bulbs fit into the track lighting system that seemed like a good idea when you were at Ikea. That being said, one of the most difficult challenges I’ve found has been to get connected with professional and reasonably priced contractors to help out with larger projects.
A few close friends of mine have been working on a site to help solve this problem by providing homeowners with tools and resources to help find local contractors. The site is called Sharperoo and is has some pretty cool features that help homeowners.
For one, it is completely localized, which makes it easier to browse and search for contractors because all the contractors I’m looking for are localized around a specific city. Being in Washington, DC and only having interest in DC-area contractors, I was happy to see that the site recognized my location and sent me to Sharperoo DC.
Sharperoo is taking more of an open, community-based approach that will eventually benefit from the network effect as they build a user base. In the short term, while they are building out their base there are some good pieces of information on individual contractors including license status and bond status, which do help create a sense that the contractor is legitimate.
That being said, the true measure of the site’s success seems to hinge on the question of whether or not they will be able to drive adoption and interaction from homeowners. The fact that it is free to use and has a pretty nice, simple interface seems to suggest that they are set-up properly however we will see. I’m hoping the site builds though because finding good, local contractors can be a real pain in the ass and it would be great to have a free, readily available resource to help with this.
