Contractors

If you want to do something out of the ordinary or even do the extraordinary in terms of creating your dream home, you are going to need a contractor. There are many contractors in Panama, but beware the quality differential can be large. Your best bet is to ask around and find a couple of people who had a similar amount of work done, for example an entire overhaul of a huge old home, or the creation of a bohio.

Find who they used, would they recommend their contractor and if so contact the contractor. See if they are still in business, are they still doing this sort of work and will they give you a quote. Remember this is a developing country and the Panamanian education system for the average worker is far from adequate so their knowledge is going to be rudimentary, so use them to do rudimentary jobs. Some of them are masters at building those thatched roof bohios but don’t expect them to build a house.

Remember these are human bengs and so you may get people who quote too high a price to see if you will “go for it” get severl quotes but don’t necessarily for the least expensive. they quote could be totlly l out of the ball park and they will just get started and run out of money because they didn’t estimate properly and you will be paying more no matter what. So know your prices, be aware fo what others are charging and know what your neighbor paid, if you think you are going to “force” the Panamanian to honor his contract, think again. they have no money and few if any assets.

Few of them are really dishonest but they get overwhelmed easily have no training in etimating or running a crew, neer mind running a business so help them help you. Don’t gve them a lot of money, if they need to buy materils go with them and buy the materials.

If you have a really big or expensive job than you can find high end contractors who are well trained, most are not Panamanians although there are some good well trained Panamanian engineers. Get set to enjoy the process it is likely to take much, much longer than you anticipated.

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