According to Martin Vahter, the CEO of 1Partner Kinnisvara, it is currently extremely difficult to find someone to renovate your apartment in Estonia due to the ongoing construction boom.
The expert notes that all the builders are engaged in large-scale projects.
«Small construction companies work on contract in shopping centers, residential buildings, and office complexes, and they are reluctant to take on smaller or one-off projects. It is more profitable for them to handle larger, long-term, and more reliable assignments,» explained Vakhter.
«If you’re buying an apartment that needs renovation, you should either have a trusted contractor in mind or be quite handy yourself; otherwise, it will be both time-consuming and expensive,» he said, emphasizing that demand has also driven up costs. According to Vakhter, the hourly rate for construction workers has increased by 30-40% over the past few years.
Due to high demand, the number of amateur builders has increased, leading to varying quality. Undoubtedly, the situation is better than in the late 2000s when walls could be constructed by someone with no experience at all. Nevertheless, even now, in different apartments of the same project, the quality can vary significantly: the walls built by one team may be much straighter than those built by another.
«Finding a reliable builder can take a considerable amount of time. Often, people consult with 20 different tilers without receiving a single reasonable offer, or the waiting list for building a fence stretches six months ahead,» said the expert, adding that sometimes people manage to arrange for repairs to be done after the worker’s main job, in the evenings or on weekends.
«The construction crisis primarily affects private individuals who need to renovate a single apartment. In the case of large projects, the shortage of builders is probably not as severe. Subcontractors of major firms utilize labor rental companies that bring in workers from Poland. These companies, in turn, bring in cheaper labor from Ukraine,» explained Wachter.
Source: http://rus.delfi.ee
