[endisneigh]

This is an interesting idea.

Personally the issue hasn’t been financing because you can get outside financing to fund any renovations already.

What I want is an intermediary that takes the money and acts as an escrow and only gives the contractor payment once observable metrics have been completed, e.g. bathroom was completed with permits pulled and inspection done by the city; 4/4 recessed lights installed per agreement, etc.

In my experience the biggest issue for contractors and homeowners is one party not living up to their end of the agreement.

In other words I want to be able to write a contract like code and want guarantees about what I’m paying for. If and when unexpected things happen they should’ve already been explicitly discussed in the contract.

[RobKanda]

Whilst some outside financing is available, for the general contractor the ability to offer 0% finance just isn't there. Kanda provides these contractors the ability to offer this and compete with larger companies. Rather nicely, the agreements that both parties sign on our finance products actually achieve what you’re asking for: the customer signs a satisfactory note on completion of the work (assuming they’re happy) which allows the release of funds.

For customers, however, we do know that an issue can be that work isn't completed to the standard you expect. One of the products Kanda hopes to bring to market soon is a secure holding account to arbitrate payments, allowing upfront payment with tranches released on milestones being completed, pretty much exactly as you've explained above, to hold both parties to agreements.