Neglecting your home's foundation can cause significant problems indeed. If you find cracks or even more serious problems in your home's foundation, you need to have them repaired immediately. Finding the right foundation repair contractor is imperative to getting the job done right.

Do you know someone?

This isn't the time to ask handyman "Jack of all trades" Uncle Ned to help you, because foundation repairs are generally pretty serious and need to be done right. Done wrong, you could worsen the damage and significantly impact your home's value negatively, or even compromise your own safety. However, if you know someone who's a licensed foundation repair contractor or you know of a foundation repair company, and you know they do good work, you can contact them for a quote. Alternatively, ask friends and family who are local and see who they have used. As long as they're happy with the job done, you can be pretty sure you'll be happy, too.

Begin your search online

If you don't know anyone who can do the job for you, the next step is to go online and search for somebody. Simply doing a search on the words "foundation repair contractor" or "foundation repair company" along with your location should bring up a number of choices on the Internet. If you use the search engine Google, it's a pretty good bet that the first few choices listed are going to be from reputable companies. This isn't completely foolproof, but in general, the more popular a company is with customers, the higher its page rank is going to be.

Narrow down your choices

Take the first 5 to 10 companies on the list of companies you bring up and research each company along with the words "review" or "complaint. "This should highlight any major problems customers have had. You can also check the Better Business Bureau's website at BBB. org to ferret out any complaints. There are also specific "consumer resource" sites online that you can check to find good local contractors in your area.

Interview several contractors

Before you hire a foundation repair contractor or foundation repair company, make sure you do a face-to-face interview with two or three of your top choices. They should be willing to come out to your house and make an initial assessment of damage (sometimes with a service fee charge, sometimes not), and give you a basic estimate of what it's going to cost to fix in terms of time and money. Even though it may cost you a little bit for a service fee, it's worth it to get two or three contractors out to talk with you face-to-face and give you a solid estimate before you sign a contract and they started on the work.

Make sure they offer a guarantee of their work -- before it starts

Any good, licensed professional repair contractor or foundation repair company is going to offer a warranty for the work done, as long as you agree to the recommended job (for example, if you only want the large cracks in your foundation repaired with epoxy, and the contractor knows that this repair isn't going to hold, he or she may do the repair, but won't guarantee its results). Make sure you get the cost estimate, the expected time frame of completion, and the exact specifics of the job in writing before work starts.