By the time a project has gone wrong, the warning signs are usually obvious in hindsight. The useful exercise is learning to see them beforehand, and almost all of them appear in the bid itself.
What should be there
The registration number. Washington requires registered contractors to include it in advertising. Its absence from a written bid is a genuine question, not a formatting oversight.
A scope you could hold someone to. Materials, quantities, what is included, what is explicitly not. A bid reading “supply and install new roof — $X” gives you nothing to enforce. One specifying squares, tear-off layers, underlayment, flashing, ventilation and disposal does.
A payment schedule tied to progress. Payments should follow milestones — materials delivered, rough-in complete, inspection passed — rather than calendar dates. Dates pay a contractor for time; milestones pay them for work.
Permit responsibility, stated. Who pulls the permit, who pays for it, and whether the price includes it. This is a frequent source of disagreement precisely because it is so often left unsaid.
Change order terms. How additional work gets priced and approved. In older Washington homes, discovering something unexpected is likely rather than possible, and you want the mechanism agreed while everyone is calm.
What should worry you
A large upfront deposit. A reasonable deposit covers initial materials. A demand for a large proportion before work starts inverts the risk entirely, and it is the single most common feature of the worst outcomes.
A price that expires today. Legitimate contractors are busy. They do not need you to sign this afternoon, and a deadline attached to a discount is a sales technique rather than a scheduling reality.
A business name that does not match the register. Compare them. A mismatch is one of the most reliable warning signs available.
Suggesting the work does not need a permit. Sometimes true, often not. A contractor volunteering that you can skip a permit which is genuinely required is telling you how they handle obligations generally.
Cash-only terms. There are legitimate reasons a small trader prefers cash for a small job. There are no good reasons to insist on it for substantial work, and it removes the paper trail you would need if anything went wrong.
Comparing bids properly
Three bids structured differently cannot be compared, and this is where most homeowners lose the advantage of getting three.
Ask each contractor to break the work down the same way, and to state their assumptions explicitly — what they have allowed for decking replacement, whether the permit is included, what happens if rot is found. A bid that appears cheapest often turns out to have excluded something the others allowed for.
The one that is much cheaper
If one bid comes in far below the others, it is not usually a bargain. It generally means a different scope, cheaper materials, an unregistered subcontractor, or an intention to make the difference back through change orders once work has started and you are committed. Ask what accounts for the gap, and treat a vague answer as the answer.