About Home811

Hiring a contractor usually means going in blind — a name from a friend, a stock-photo website, a form that hands your phone number to five companies who then compete to call you first. Home811 is built the other way around: see the actual work first, read honest reviews, and reach out on your own terms.

Why this exists

Nearly every contractor has the same thing sitting on their phone: hundreds of photos and videos of finished jobs. Kitchens taken down to the studs and rebuilt, a deck framed from bare ground, a bathroom that was falling apart and now looks like new. Landscaping, repairs, years of it. Real work — and almost none of it anywhere a potential customer can actually see it.

That work is the best sales pitch there is. A homeowner deciding who to trust with their house doesn’t want a slogan — they want to see the last ten kitchens you built. So Home811 is built around proof instead of ads: contractors publish their real finished projects — photos and videos, not just a paragraph about themselves — next to the reviews homeowners have left. A person on our team checks every profile, project, and listing before it goes public, so what you see is real work from real local businesses. There’s also a marketplace for surplus materials and tools, and community groups for both sides of a project.

The photos already on your phone can land your next customer. They just need somewhere to live.

For homeowners

See the work before you call. Browse a contractor’s finished projects — kitchens, decks, roofs, whatever you’re planning — and judge the quality yourself instead of trusting a sales pitch.
Reviews you can trust. Ratings come from real homeowners, one per project, and contractors can reply — but they can’t pay to hide them.
No sales calls. You message the contractors you choose, when you choose. We never sell your contact information.
Get the price in writing. Contractors can send an itemized contract right in the message thread — every line spelled out, not a lump sum. Nothing is binding until you accept, and once you do, neither side can quietly change the numbers.
Search your area. Filter by trade and location to find contractors who actually work near you.
It’s free. Browsing, messaging, reviewing, and posting a project request all cost nothing.

For contractors

A free profile that shows your work. Your portfolio of real project photos and videos does the selling — the homeowners who contact you have already seen what you can do.
Reach homeowners with real intent. People find you by searching for your trade in your service area, or send you a project directly. These aren’t cold leads.
Stop paying for shared leads. No pay-per-lead, no bidding against four other companies for the same phone number. A homeowner who messages you messages you.
Quote and close in the conversation. Build an itemized contract with a live total, send it without leaving the thread or paying for separate software, and get a clear accepted-or-rejected answer — accepted contracts lock, so the agreed scope and price are on the record for both sides.
Build a reputation that sticks. Reviews live on your profile permanently, and you can respond to every one.
More than a directory. Sell surplus materials on the marketplace, and connect with other trades in the groups.
Share it like a business card. Your profile link works on its own — post it on Instagram or Facebook, text it after a quote, print it on a flyer or your truck. It’s real photos and reviews, already built, so you don’t have to pay someone for a website that barely gets any traffic.

How the review process works

When a contractor submits a profile, a portfolio project, or a marketplace listing, it goes into a queue and a person reviews it before it’s visible to anyone. It keeps the directory honest — what you see on Home811 is real work from real local businesses.

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