contractor and something goes wrong what we can do is going to go over what i think you need to do before you start a project or recommendations of what contracts looks like there's a lot of information it's all in your hand you know that we've been to you we've got more  my as lieutenant mentioned you can everybody hear me ok which is ok as you mentioned i've been a police officer for it's my seventeenth year i've been an attorney for twenty three years i've represented homeowners and i've represented contractors in civil cases involving chapter one forty two way which is the home improvement contractor statute and as a police officer most of chapter one forty two a is civil but there is a criminal element which we're going to talk about later on and there's been a number of instances where we've had to invoke that criminal aspect to get situations resolved for people who live in belmont so we're going to talk about everything that you never want to know about a home were proven contracting it did indicate that this was a home improvement avoiding home improvement contractor fraud and that is a component of this but i just wanna make it clear that most of the contractors are great they do a great job i think you'll attest to that but every now and then issues come up and that's what chapter one hundred two ways for again the civil aspects of it and the criminal aspects of it my contact information is up here it's in a new sheets if you would like a electronic version of everything that we're presenting today from the power point presentation to the other materials i'm happy to e mail it you just sign up and i'll send it from the police station to most people who have a computer or have access to a computer ok and certainly if you come here you can they get computers here and you can get a lot of this information as well so the purpose is presentation is just to go through the different aspects of home improvement contracting exactly what it entails what is a contractor who is a contractor what are your rights as homeowners you don't have to actually be a homeowner as long as you know you look you're if you're a tenant and you live in an apartment and you have work done it applies to you as well basically she's sick of contractors using homeowners as the personal a t m and what happens a lot is that the contractor will take money and then work doesn't get done for a variety of reasons i've sort of put it into three categories we do have some people out there unfortunately who are criminals still will they'll convince you that they can to do some work they'll take money and they won't do anything that's easy that's a larceny so we've got people like that the second type of person is where they take on a project that that just not capable of doing you may have a contractor who is a great carpenter and he does works in cabinets or he works doing walls and so forth but he does you deck or he does your roof is something he's not capable of doing and he's he's acting outside the scope of what he's able to do those folks get themselves jammed up as well and then the third type is what we have sometimes circumstances happened i had a very very nice gentleman who's a contractor who's in his sixty's no criminal record no issues at all he was doing a roof in belmont and he'd stripped the shingles off and then he had a medical issue like a minor stroke and then he had a family emergency in canada so he left the job but what happened when it rained water hit the roof came down damaged the kitchen legitimate clearly he was in a criminal he didn't was intending on doing anything wrong but unfortunately what happened is the home owner is the one who got got stuck you frequently have contractors who have several different jobs going in money from one job gets commingled and paid for another job then all of a sudden the money dries up what happens somebody's going to get stuck but we want to make sure that if anybody's going to get stuck it's not you folks you know the homeowners it should be on the it should be on  contractor and if the contract it does what he's supposed to be doing and we're going to go through and explain exactly what that is if he does what he's supposed to be doing you guys have an awful lot more protection  interesting here and you can follow through on the papers if you want if if you're having trouble seeing this the truth two thousand and fifteen was not out yet every year up until this year in the top five consumer complaints for the massachusetts attorney general as home improvement contractor this is the first year that it's dropped out of the top five it's still there there's still plenty of complaints but you see now a lot of data privacy issues this tax scams debt collectors with the economy in the state that it's then a lot of people owe money and they dekel action scams are all kinds of scams so in massachusetts has dropped out of the top five but it's still in the top ten but if we look at the top five nationally through c n n home improvement contracts is at the second most complained about issue that consumers have so it's certainly a very very topical issue that we're dealing with so what is chapter one forty two way it's a statute that protects homeowners from contractors who are doing the wrong that's no good same thing if a contractor there are cases where if there's an unfair deceptive act on the part of the contractor it invokes chapter ninety three a and if you file a civil case you have potentially trouble damages in attorney's fees so it's a consumer friendly statute that protects you folks from unscrupulous contractors so home improvement contractors defined as any person who owns or operates a contracting business who threw himself or others undertakes to do residential contracting work in massachusetts and what's that defined as it's has the owner occupied if you have a four family house and you don't live there chapter one forty two a not apply you may have some other recourse but you don't have chapter one forty two way and his we're going to see there's a lot of teeth to the statute so owner occupied one through four family dwelling you need to live there or if you buy a house that's already built and you're having renovations done it applies to you as well even if you haven't lived there as long as your intent is to live there as soon as the work is done forty one forty two and you've got a much shorter time frame to file a claim with the secretary of state's office if you're going to do that so we'll we'll get to that so there are number of things that you want to do if you're going to select a home improve contractor you can plumber is carpenters electricians plumbers electricians who have specific licenses chapter one forty eight doesn't apply to them there's a separate statute that does and that information is in new sheets and what will come upon it but the office consumed with affairs regulates home improvement contractors here's the thing we're going to talk about this a lot the most important aspect of any one of these contracts is making sure that the contractor pulls the building permit if you pull it yourselves you don't get the benefits of chapter one forty two wait it just makes things much more difficult for you so if you're in a situation where you've got a contractor and he's doing work and he says hey look pull the permit yourself you're going to save money don't do it in fact don't hire that contractor ok because if he's willing to do that he's in immediate violation of chapter one forty two a and he's in he's violated the code of mass regulations by not till pulling a building permit if you pull itself it saves you a little bit of money i just had a job done a roofing job of one of my houses it was an eight thousand dollars job it cost me eighty dollars to have the contractor pull the permit was that it would have been maybe twenty five if i had done it you're not saving a ton of money if you had a one hundred thousand dollars renovation that might cost you a thousand bucks but you're better off paying that thousand dollars and having the peace of mind because what happens with when somebody registers as a home improvement contractor anybody can do it you could do it you c do it you need no special skills to do more elaborate work you have to be a construction supervisor and you have to take classes and you have to pass a test but anybody can be a home improvement contractor but what that fee does and it's very important is the money that's collected from folks who are registering goes into a was called a guarantee fund if you have a claim against a contractor and you exhaust all your remedies and you can't recover against that contractor you have up to ten thousand dollars that you can get but he's got to be a registered home improvement contractor and we're going to go through some basic contract so you can see where that would appear he's got to be registered in a permit has to be pulled the things that he has to do if he does that you've got access to this guarantee fund and if he doesn't he subject to civil and potentially criminal sanctions so once you've selected the contractor the things that you want to make sure that you do you need to have a written contract if it's more than five hundred dollars it's got to be a written contract kerry comes from the start from the secretary of state's office and i'll go through that so don't enter into a contract into an into arrangement without a written contract if it's more than five hundred dollars you want to make sure you haven't got somebody coming over and doing a little bit of work you don't need it and that's that's fine you don't want to go through that that but don't enter it without a written contract i've got a sample contract that will go through that's in here it's something that contractors have access to and that they should use that in one form or another again the building permit is going to come up a lot really want to ingrain this on you folks to make sure that there's a building permit and not to apply for you you want to make sure that the licensed or registered and sure that they've got liability insurance i've had cases where somebody provides a copy of a liability insurance policy and call the insurance company and yeah there's an insurance policy but it's not for them they've wiped it out in the photocopied it and put in a different name you can call and you can confirm we've all been in situations where that that here in the back in x stands up we don't need to quite trust somebody does specially these days is plenty of resources available to find out make sure that people who are saying the doing something are doing doing the right thing ask for references ask for you know if a contractor does a great job for you you're going to be happy to if somebody calls you to say yes he did a great job for me a picture see the kind of work they've done make sure that the doing a if you've got an outside deck that's being built or a roof anything structural you gotta make sure that the person is qualified to do it you can check with a bit of business bureau and again that will come across them i've got numbers that you can call don't ever feel pressured to bullied one of the reasons that we we focus on seniors and does presentation to not just seniors but to to all people is can get bullied and they get little bit bullied they get embarrassed and they just you know if they've access to the money they'll just sign the check don't feel pressured don't feel bullied again if you feel that way a little here in the back the next sticking up that's where you want to say hold on a second here you make a phone call might my cell phone number by the way is on that you guys can call me anytime you want if you get an issue and you're not quite sure and little bit uncomfortable just give me a call don't ever pay cash in a worse case you know if you have to do it make sure you get a receipt are number of exceptions even if you have a one to four family dwelling that you live in and you having work done on it there's some exceptions if the commonwealth of massachusetts cummins comes in and does work they're exempt from chapter one forty two way if you're hiring somebody from exempt obviously if you're doing it on your own home somebody who works for a contractor if you wanted to sue the contracting company you can't sue the employees of the company as well you can only go after the contractor himself contract to be more than five hundred dollars and they have to be it has to be their business if they made less than five thousand dollars the prior year chapter one forty two a doesn't apply but if i'm hiring a contractor and they did make five thousand dollars contracting last year i'm probably not going to hire them so and full time students as well it doesn't apply to them think about it too it's your home it's got to be things that are in the home or apartment to the home and outside wall a patio things like that those don't apply landscaping doesn't apply interior painting or wall covering doesn't apply so while paper paint that's not home improvement relative to the statute but as soon as they start messing around with walls doing wood work doing doors and things like that doesn't floor covering is not like carpeting and tile are not swimming pools or not so you talk to contractors you decided on one now what you want to do you've called a couple of people like i still want to check and make sure this person is who he says he is you go to google or any of the search engines just type in massachusetts home improvement contracting and it's going to bring you this list here and the very first one which says home improvement contracting you click on that and it's going to give you this list of different links where you click on the links and it brings you to these different pages within there we can check a home improvement contractor's registration we can file a complaint i've got some plain forms in here as well everything relative to the home improvement contractor you can get with links here but if you click on check a registration it brings you to this screen right here and now they're going to give you a proposal if it doesn't have a home improvement you'll say h i c registration number if they don't have that you want to hire somebody else you want to make sure that there are registered home improvement contractor you can type in the registration number or you can type in their name and it'll tell you whether they're licensed it'll give a list i just put in smiths and i got a whole bunch of smiths but if you put in front strassmann they're probably not a lot of me running around if i'm doing a contracting work in your house it'll show up here either i'm registered or i'm not if their licenses been revoked it's been claims against them it's going to show up here so it's a very very good way of determining whether or not somebody legitimate so i just typed in this guy smith i got jeffrey smith it says no complaints of falling for him you can go back and look at any history of any complaints on him any money that he's had to pay and so forth again i'm focusing on this the ten thousand dollars guarantee fund which is that the secretary of state's office and it's a general fund ok there are a lot of things and i know there's a lot of information here which is why you can have these packets and which is why i'll send this you i've got some cheat sheets that are going to be in here that you can access so at the very least is some basic information i'm just going through a little bit more extensively now so the fourteen things that have to be in a contract so if you hire somebody and they've given an estimate and it's got a handwritten note of what they're doing they're missing a whole bunch of things that they have to have and if they don't have those things they're in violation of chapter one forty two way to complete agreement you know if if somebody is going to come in and they're going to redo your kitchen everything that they're going to be doing on there should be listed on the contract the names registration numbers of the contractor the date that the work is scheduled to begin and the date is scheduled to be substantially completed things certainly get delayed things come up but a contractor should be able to put down a start date and a date of substantial completion a detailed description of the work that's can be done the total i'm on agreed to be paid for the work to be performed what happens frequently in contracts you've got somebody coming in to in work and then you say geez you know can you put a window in over here or you can you can you move this you can move that it's called a change in water it should still be in writing if it's more than five hundred dollars but everything should be writing in the reasons we have disputes at the end is that there's a misunderstanding between the homeowner or the contractor so the total amount paid a time schedule of payments you never pay more than one third up front unless it's for a specialty item so if you're ordering expensive granite or expensive appliances or something like that then you can pay more than the third otherwise there's a schedule of payments it's a third up front it's a third on the civil contract you'll see it a third up front a third at some point in the middle of the contract and no final payment will be demanded until the contract is completed so at the very least you want to hold off a certain amount of money you can have what's called a punch list at the end things that may be not happy with that the contractor should should do in if he hasn't done them you can withhold payment all parties must sign the contract that's you in the contract or the boilerplate language that language that should show up in every one of these contracts at the bottom is a note saying that all home improvement contractors and subcontractors shall be registered and any inquiries about a contractor or sub contractor should be directed to and there it is the office  consumer affairs in this phone number here the office of consumer affairs typically i'll call that number if i have a question you might get an odd situation in some of cities chapter one forty two apply here and one came up like mason every work certainly within the house does well there was an insert in the chimney being installed and i just didn't know so i called as a woman who's the director of the off the consumer affairs in the home improvement contracting division answer the phone there was no  electronic voice dialing hit one hit two or three she answered the phone in which she's around she'll do that and she's happy to talk to people and she's a real advocate for homeowners rights the registration number if you get a three day cancellation a write in i get calls what somebody buys a car and they realize as soon as they bought the car i think i made a big mistake and the say don't i have a three day cancellation period it's not a general thing that you have but you do have it here with home approval contracts so if you sign a contract and then you find out from your neighbor or somebody calls you back and says i'll just don't hire him you do have a three day cancellation right in the light the right should be listed on the contract and he warranties in literally these words do not sign this contract if there are any blank spaces you don't want any mysterious language to show up after the fact i'm telling you i've had it it'll it'll work is being done in then the whole want to come to me and say you know when i signed this this language was in here as well you have this big space in the contract or wrote something in so any time anything is handwritten in it should be initialed it should be any blank spaces in a contract of payments it will happen the contracts say hey can you you know you've got a ten thousand dollars payment due next month can you give me three thousand dollars now suggesting that you not do it the should be no reason for it unless it's something that you things in there and you know what the burden is really on the contractor to make sure that these things are done if they're not you know the homeowner it's his contract the any ambiguity is going to be resolved in your favor so you want to make sure that you should have a federal contract and if you do have a thorough contract it's going to resolve most of the things that can happen but problems arise erodes all the time the first thing is just deal with the issue we were talking earlier police involvement should be the absolute last resort but call the contractor a lot of times the scenes can get resolved especially if you're holding on to some money that he wants to get paid if you've paid him everything out of the contract and you've got problems guess what now you're chasing him he's going be a lot more apt to come to the job if you all of a little bit of money as a local consumer program and as a phone number and you packets it sort of it's like a better business bureau but it's a phone number that you can call they work in conjunction with the attorney general's office if you have a legitimate complain if you're unhappy with the color or this is something minor i wouldn't waste my time but if you think that this contractor is committed fraud and he's really done something that he should have done you can call this number and they'll start an investigation a mediation program that the bring people together and try to get that to resolve the bell one number is listed there seven hundred six twelve ninety two it's in your packets call that number if you don't get satisfaction from the contractor himself you can call that number if you've got a small amount of damage that's done under seven thousand dollars you want to file a small claims action you start hiring attorneys i mean you can but it can get expensive except you might have a six or seven thousand dollar claim but if clearly there's a violation of chapter one forty two way the statutes provide for trouble damages and attorneys fees so you could have a three thousand dollar claim trouble would be one thousand dollars you could have twenty thousand dollars in attorney and you get a thirty thousand dollar claim over something minor the threat of trouble damage in attorney's fees under chapter one forty two a and chapter ninety three a is going to get most contractors to resolve virtually every one of the cases that has come to me where it's become criminal not civil anymore we've been able to resolve so you could file a small claims action you guys have all seen people's court if you've never actually done a small claims and that's just a matter of you go in front of a clerk and you tell your side in the contractor will tell his side if it's for a small amount of money it's going to get resolved nobody wants to take a day and go into court and nobody wants to get a judgment against them and any reputable contractor and if you've done your due diligence before hand any reputable contractor is going to want so there is arbitration as well there's an arbitration fee and all that's going to do is potentially revoke that contractors right to be home approve a contract or if you've got a legitimate claim against a registration and you prevail they can pull his registration and you'll see if you go through and play around with this you put a different people's names that that they will revoke their registration and they won't prevent any will prevent them from doing something to somebody else so it may be worth it just on principle that you file a claim against them in go to arbitration lawyers can get expensive if you chasing twelve thousand dollars it's above the small claims limit one option is you can go to small claims and just go after him for the seven thousand to be happy to get that twelve thousand dollars if you end up not getting attorney's fees and not getting trouble damages it could cost twelve thousand dollars to for the for the attorney fees charging whatever shotting per hour so you have to if you follow what we're talking about here it's going to resolve almost every one of the situations where you're going to be in a situation where you've got to go after a contractor but if you find yourself in that situation and you have to call a lawyer c i don't represent people in belmont or contractors in belmont but their lawyers will you know you go in the google or go in the l a page and you can find somebody that will the guarantee fund ok we talked about ten thousand dollars if you remedies you go after a contractor in small claims you get a judgment and he disappears he goes bankrupt you can still prevail it's i had a criminal case we charge him with home approving contractor fraud and even though he went bankrupt he discharged one hundred twenty thousand dollars in bankruptcy he's paying homeowner five hundred dollars a month to get the case resolved because it's criminal it's it goes beyond the bankruptcy laws so the the last step is a police involvement and that section nineteen of chapter one forty two a is the criminals section and basically what it does it makes every infraction of chapter one forty two a a criminal offense now if this something minor we're not going to get involved in the in the criminal justice system doesn't want to deal with those complaints that there really are civil one of the things they will do though is if a contractor is not registered as a home or proven contractor and he's doing work that is criminal so he has to knowingly be unregistered yes and no that he needs to be registered and he has to be unregistered so the homeowner comes to me and says hey i've got this issue this contractor did x y and z i'm going to call a contractor we want to be fair we want t contractor sides he was going on in the first thing i'm going to say is you know you need to be registered and when they say oh yeah i'd fight gotcha ok that's criminal he knows that he needs to be registered and he's not it's a criminal offense  n that alone has potentially five thousand dollars fine and in two years in jail for operating as an unregistered homework with a contractor the threat of that makes most of these people settle these cases if even before chapter one forty two way of if a contractor came to you and said listen i'll give me four thousand dollars and i'll do you forge i'll start with a two thousand dollars check you give the check and then he never does any work pretty clear that's larceny i mean you have to prove it at the point that you gave the check that he intended to not do the job pretty easy to do so we have that larceny charge well and i will put them in and most of my cases on the other sheets the other packet will start with the first couple of sheets actually it's just it's a lot of it's a lot of the things that we talked about today it's things that that you can do to protect yourselves it's sort of a summary of the things that we've talked about it's the first two pages of that second packet that you have and you can flip through that at some point again and just get three references get photos do you diligence before you enter into anything the third page of the packet is this is actually kind of interesting this goes through and lists who what work needs to have a registration what work needs to be a licensed construction supervisor and what work doesn't need any and what work needs permits and it's there's an awful lot on here so you can go through and say ok well geez i'm going to have my the deck done while a deck you need to be registered if you need to be licensed you have to be registered as well so that ten thousand dollars guarantee fund is always available to you regardless of the situation anything involving structured decks rube's things like that are going to require a construction supervisors license as well if somebody standing on something or some things above your head you don't want to falling you don't want people getting hurt they require a little bit more so it goes through and explains what work needs to be registered what words the license were building permit needs to be pulled again you can see things like driveways and fencing that's outside that's going to do with the home improvement relative to the statute senses things like that it's flooring finished tile things like that don't need it as well and you can go through and look down and see we talked about the kitchen cabinets do you need to be registered a licensed you actually you do you know a cabinet but a kitchen cabinet something that can fall on you so the situation you had sir earlier where the kitchen cabinets were done improperly if you're unhappy with the result and he's not a registered home approval contractor the threat of jail time for mr handling these cabinets is going to be enough to hopefully make him settle this case so we have all the this list all these different things and you can check it in that let you know whether or not you need it the next after that is is the complaint form after that what's the next thing after the all the do's and don'ts yeah let's look at those so you should do diligence check references the board a better business bureau consumer affairs go to google yelp angie's list the computer is an amazing resource and if you don't have one come here they'll help you with it if you're really really stuck you're welcome to call me as well and we can go through it literally in five minutes you can find out if anybody's been in business for any mana time you can find out a lot about them and show their registered licensed check the list of work that requires it doesn't need to be registered licensed  get a second a third opinion you don't have to use the first person you see or even the second to third the fact that's the cheapest if you get a bad feeling about it or you're not getting great recommendations it's worth it to pay a little bit more money if ify you to get a better job get at least three estimates check the registration check for insurance liabilities and worker's compensation you don't want to have somebody get hurt on the job site and then sue you you're not in control of it you're probably not going to win but why even deal with that if they have worker's compensation and liability insurance it's a non issue follow the terms of the contract the contractor and you as a lookin for advances i wouldn't do it just you've got in law we look at what's called the four corners of a document you've got a written contract in this particular case you can see it's just a couple of pages everything should be contained within those four corners of that document and if something is on the outside you want to make sure that it's in writing you want to reduce it to writing make sure the job complete before your final payment if it's an insurance claim if there were a lot of them last year with all the snow that we had in with ice dams and things like that you want to make sure with your insurance agent you building department you want to make sure that the job is done before signing that check over because once they've got that check you're going to have a lot of trouble trying to track them down better to make them track you down again worst case scenario give me a call if you have any questions don't be lazy it's easy to say this guy he's fine and not making phone calls or not to you diligence if it's a small money job that's fine but if you're spending ten grand twenty granted doing work done you need to take it time and do it right don't be rushed into a decision don't be bullied don't pay cash don't pull your own permit and if something does happen don't be embarrassed it happens again this is not a bash home improvement contractors this is what can we do to protect everybody in this protect them as much as a protection guys if everybody does the right thing if things go bad don't be embarrassed if it's somebody who's a con man they do it for a living you know it's a bad living but that's what they do they're pros at it  but the fact that it's happened give us a call do something about it don't be embarrassed in think that there's nothing that you can do about it the next one we have is that is a complaint to the complaint form the simple contractor can forget that so this is well you can look at your contract everything virtually everything that we've talked about today is in the sample contract this is a contract  secretary of state's office puts out there's actually no reason why a legitimate valid honest contractor doesn't have every one of these terms he can take this contract and simply put his name at the top of it that's absolutely fine there's no reason why you would want to foll this you know sort of the money up front when you're going to start i've had people they gave the contractor a ten thousand dollars deposit and six months later they still haven't done any work that's not how it works ok make sure that they had here to the terms of this contract if you go through and look at it everything that we talked about today is in this contract the language everything don't be pressured everything that we talked about is in there don't sign it it's blank spaces both people signature is your rights under chapter one forty two a to ninety three a no salary the payments the information for the consumer affairs everything that you need is in that contract and is absolutely no reason why a contractor was honest won't to try to make a living you know you guys do whatever it is that you do you need something done you bring people in you know i know my limitations there's a lot of stuff i can do myself i own some property of my own house as well i know my limitations is times where i need to bring a contractor in if it's something extensive i'm certainly going to i can't do it on the houses that i don't live in but my own house if i have work that's being done i'm going to follow this and i'm going to make sure and i'm going to make sure that contract and knows that that i'm aware of what my rights are and you get to do the same thing you don't want to confront him to begin your relationship but you certainly want to make them aware that you know you want to see you know a contract that has these terms and i'm telling you i've done a lot of these cases that come to the police department in they're all there some of it name on it and then you have all the information if in a worst case scenario you want to file a home for the contractor a complaint with the secretary of state's office it's that last page and the link on the website says exactly that it says complaint form you can click on that you can actually fill it online and you can go through in and and you guys get to both tell you side of the story in hopefully it'll never come to this and i hope you guys never in a situation where you need the in the wall and they've got to smash open the wall to get to it then you know of course that would be part of the damage maybe it's a penns i mean if you hire a general contractor they'll hire the sub contractors to do that work in that particular case you're going to need a plumber you're going to need a carpenter you might need electrician depending on weather and you can do that yourself if you've got the time you get the inclination if you hire a general contractor you're going to pay more because he's going to be he's he's the one who's getting those people and he's got the responsibility and he's going to bump up the bill but if the insurance companies pain forth and that's that's that's fine when you have an emergency situation is a little bit different you're certainly entitled to get somebody in to certainly to to stop the leak and to see what's going on there  y and if if if enough people complain about the fact that a you know what it was actually service out of woburn and not restore pro out of boston where they are and you know i didn't know these people and they came out maybe they did a great job maybe that maybe they did but i'm my parents house in belmont we had a lot of work done and we used one of those companies and my sister was really more involved with it and it was in terms of bringing them in and they did ok job there was some things that never really got resolved and we called afterwards and it just it was an expensive to finish it so we went in and we we did it after the fact in a perfect world i would hire a general contractor myself i'd hire the local people to come in  that a great it's like anything you may tend to pen it paid all my prices you know but so look around if you get somebody is willing to come out and they get to do just as good a job and pay less money why would you pay more but if you like the fact that the local and  it's worth paying for it then by all means and then you go do that so windows is going to be an expensive job and a wide range but it's an old house same thing that they need to come and measure every window because especially in the older houses they're not standardized in a fairness at all and they might be three or four inches off that but you know then you hire somebody else  to be and the reason is never really caught on it's a great idea it's a great concept you think well let's go solar well they weren't that efficient they become much much more efficient now the problem is where you really get your money is if the if you get the rebates from the government typically if the town it's i'm glad you mentioned that has been one has that mean is like department and i see signs around town belmont going solar my understanding unless it's changes that disrupts these aren't quite there if there's a local white department i may be mistaken there is something that you want to look into when you get a cold call and i get them all all the time you know in as soon as i tell them i'm in the hall they hang up the phone they don't even talk to me well here's the thing what's with these companies will do is they'll pay for that in a lease it to you and so you may save a little bit because you elect bill's going to go down in the cost of the leasing is you know the promise you'll never own the panels around your house in a lot of cases exactly once those panels are on you want to make sure the roof before you put them on the roof needs to be secure and it's a roof needs work you know and if you get a company that's telling you that they'll do the solar panels on the roof i wouldn't trust them because clearly it's in their best interest to do both so i would i'd be a little bit careful i did talk to somebody i did have some to come out to the house  panels yourself and having a contractor put them on for a good sized roof it's maybe twenty to thirty thousand dollars in panels in the not expensive to put on if you've got somebody knows what they're doing once you have them in theoretically your electricity could be free in not only free but there rebates that come back at the end of year were money goes back into the grid the town basically will will buy back the extra energy that the solar panels will produce if they do produce extra energy so you have to look at electric bills it doesn't make sense to do this if you want to build one hundred fifty dollars a month you know the fifth that's eight hundred a year you know ten years is eighteen thousand twenty years is thirty six you know at that point you probably have to replace them so doesn't doesn't work that well you don't but if you knew now on the other hand you know you get a home equity loan for prime minus one or prime or whatever the rate is and you're writing off the cost of it and you can you can pay a little at a time you all you do is pay the interest you don't even have to be the principal maybe it's worth it maybe do you think well you know for the it's helping the environment and i'm doing doing this in doing that if you are going to hire one of those companies you've got to make sure that the contract really sets out exactly who is painful what and who's getting what in whether it's worth it to do in your case maybe it is maybe it isn't they'll come out to look at your roof they'll see which way it faces they'll see how much of an incline it is if you've got a fairly flat roof and it's big you can put a lot of solar panels on and it's going to get the sun a lot of the day but if you if you have an a frame a pitched roof like that and one side typically you can tell just by looking at your house mohsen things like that if one side doesn't really get the sun much you'll is it really street we certainly build a building permit to do that i think the issue that this woman had is that they were you know taking shingles off or you might be replacing shade of the roof no good you don't want to put something on top of it that you can have to remove to fix the roof down the road so so some of them are but that there's going to be supports it's like you'd have on on the corner of the house there's going to be a there's a framework that the panels go in the panels don't just sit on your roof they've got to be locked in together and they're in a framework that if you go if you go online you'll see  you go to the houses that you'll see you'll see that the there's a framework of panels most of them aren't sitting on it most people have a flat roof and we've also learnt sitting right on the roof they can be supported by some type of structure with almost guarantee a structure to the building inspectors not going to go out and he doesn't know what chapter ninety three a is four years but there are some other things within chapter one forty two way if you're going to file a claim in fact let me it was right at the end of the secondly find it i think it's two years two years to request arbitration with the consumer off to the consumer protection so you have two years there was one of the shorter timeframe ok the guaranteed funds if you've exhausted all your remedies you've got a small claims court in the guy's disappeared you've got six months to go after the guaranty fund so it's that's a fairly short timeframe but it may be three years after the job because you file small claims he doesn't show up you go back and forth you finally get a judgment it's from the date of that judgment you have six months to file to go after the guarantee fund that's really important that's ten grand that you know that you've got access to as long as  attic i don't know i don't have no idea what heavy these solar panels are i've never dealt with solar panels but but you i'm sure you're right i don't know that the contractor is qualified to do that i think what he's going to do is tell you you need to get a structural engineer  well that could be i mean the you don't need us you got to pay for it so you know a structural engineer i needed was my office it's going to cost you but on a roof yeah if you're putting something on your roof i would i would make sure that it's going to support it and you need to make sure a roofer or knows what he's doing we got you you'd put well the contract to do it would say something like see attached exhibit a and exhibit a with list everything that's going to be done obs yeah that's a small space and like anything it's always you know you can attach a separate sheet of paper if necessary so it a custom job but if it's still if it's not done right it's not done right as a a warranty it was called it's called a warranty of merchantability where anything that you buy is supposed to be fit for it's common use and if you've got shelves if you've got brackets down on holding shelves there's a problem with it now a situation like that to go to small claims court for something like that i mean that's you do need to be a rigid home a broom contracted to do kitchen cabinets so if he's not registered you've got some recourse there how in one forty two way and just explain that you think that you've got some recourse well if you're ordering custom cabinets i mean i've got you know somebody selling them i'm assuming they're expensive in who's ever selling them they need to be designed so that they work the way they're supposed to work you know i would imagine  had some specifications you must look at some pictures or something before you bottom you didn't just rely on what he thought were good cabinets so whatever it is that you would have or it is that he said that made you buy the cabinets that you bought the must have been some specifications that came with you know if if he didn't do what you supposed to do then you've got recourse after the fact i mean i don't know that you'd put the individual justification of cabinets in this room here y the parameters of chapter one forty two way this must be registered massachusetts if they're working in massachusetts i think you're always better off if something goes goes awry you know i've had to chase people in other states and it really is cumbersome to do that in to get them served and to get them within the jurisdiction of massachusetts court system i think you know it's one thing if you live on the border of new hampshire and you have in new hampshire contractor come in but i would use math people if i could just to avoid that when you want to give local people business to think at the beginning i guess you ok so if you've got a let's say it's an extensive job it's a ninety thousand dollars job may be tough to predict but that's what the contractors in business to do with the ninety thousand dollars jobs if you may be able to talk down from the thirty thousand dollars up front and then i had a construction loan on my house it was tough to to do that because the bank wouldn't release the funds until the work was done so it's a little bit different but if you're having a big job done it's a ninety thousand job dollar job thirty thousand dollars is up front and he's going to obviously have a lot of materials the the rough carpentry or when we finish whatever it is that we've done that you know he's going to make that determination if you don't think that's fair then just say look how about i give you you know you can negotiate at the beginning but it's a third a third the third if you're able to get him to take less than that then that's fine but typically it's a third a third the third  right the total contract price and payment schedule so that tells you exactly what you're talking about soap on signing contracts not to see the third this amount upon completion of whatever the job is i don't know you guys have to make that decision yourselves and usually you hold off at least something until the the jobs complete so might be a third of the beginning another third here and maybe  and then then the balance when the job's finished ok so you set up a schedule of payments i mean every job can be different so i can't tell you exactly when it's going to be but you could do it at halfway point of the job or a third of the way point of the job a jobs and done on time i mean you can establish that with him at the beginning there's a if he's if he hasn't if if you're six months past the finish point you have no special change orders does nothing he just you know he's there two days out of the week instead of five days out of the week you know you can send him a letter saying listen if you don't come in here i'm going to hire somebody else to finish this job he's breaching the contract to hire somebody else to come in and do the job and if there's an extra cost potentially he's going to be responsible for  you've got a third of the payment left to hire somebody else to finish the job conceivably you go after him for the difference so if somebody charges you more to finish the job you can go if it happens all the time it shouldn't but it does  or certainly i've been fined i've been to court on on these cases they're almost never going to get jail time especially if it's a first offense i mean if they have other issues but absolutely  the threat of two years in jail and a five thousand dollars fine is going to make a contract to resolve a case absolutely absolutely absolutely sure and it's some no no  no no no no no it's got teeth absolutely got teeth to it it's public information if you want to cement give a computer sim e mail i'm not sure how much information i can get you but i but i can i can ok but absolutely and especially if it's not the first offense you know and if there is a history larceny or something like that no you know so sir ma'am i'm sorry sure massachusetts i stand is you right a guarantee of work massachusetts well products have guarantees paint has guarantees things like that in terms of the quality of work massachusetts has a statute of limitations on which you can file a claim which is six years for breach of contract three years for a negligence action but massachusetts also something called a statute of repose and what that means is that you get a certain amount of time to make a claim but that time is told until you reasonably should have discovered that there was a problem so you know if there was a contract it does work and uses the wrong materials and you don't realize that this is behind a wall but then it starts running out a year later the statute of limitations is told until you knew or should have known about that problem once you know about the problem but it you can't sit on it forever at some point you know architects and contractors and so forth can't be sued anymore but i would look at it as six years is a breach of contract they've reached a contract if they do the proper job when they do the job for you if ten years down the road something goes you're  sure pavers or no papers are there that they're individual things that he's put together the problem with pavers in new england is we get what's called frost heaves in the winter time when he gets very cold and warms up the ground buckles and if you're certainly well within your rights now if this was four years down the road five years down the road you probably have a harder time but clearly something was done wrong you know the contractor mason whoever did it knows that we're in new england and knows that you've got weather that goes up and down like crazy that should have happened in in if it did and you know i would certainly go after him now you know you certainly well within the time period now and there must be something in your contract if you have a contract with them of how long the work is good for this should be some kind of guarantee and any kind of work forget chapter one forty two way you have any kind of work done for you you want to have some kind of warranty with that work and maybe it's a year i don't know whatever it is that he gave you so but clearly there's a problem with his work product no i didn't say that i said the statute of repose applies to them if a sane architect designs a building in twenty years down the road it falls down he shouldn't be held responsible so does a six year statute of limitations if the architect messed up the statute of repose would kick in at the time that you knew or should have known there was a defect ok so no architects and certainly be so absolutely anybody else ok any questions feel free to email me give me a call follow through this process first if you could but i'm happy to help out in a few have you know if you have a situation that you'd want to run by something doesn't seem quite right i'm happy i can't really give you the criminal information but i can certainly you know we can work through it together and see whether or not my numbers are in there and my e mails are in there you're right on the first second page in my pleasure