I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge place full of issues and corner cutting. Can I just throw more money at the problem so that I'm less stressed and offload more decisions to the builders?
The Pretty Good House
11–20 of 339 posts
Re: The Pretty Good House
#12A friend told me about the post. Thanks for the kind words. Glad you’ve all found it useful.
Dan do you ever talk about retro fitting old houses at your monthly talks.
It would wonderful to learn what can be done to existing (my home is 1880’s) buildings to improve their performance.
Re: The Pretty Good House
#13Who is the target audience for this book? Not people who want to get build their own custom home one day?
Re: The Pretty Good House
#14I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
I've done this twice by hiring a family friend as the builder once, and hiring a one-man builder another time, both times it worked out for me, was mostly headache-free, they both had excellent worksmanship. I built with a big company once and it was a nightmare. There are always headaches though, you need to expect them so you don't go crazy when it inevitably arrives. Good luck! :)
Re: The Pretty Good House
#15This is one of the areas that ML robotics companies should look into. Prefabs for whatever reason do not seem to work for the American market. Enough is enough, time to start throwing ML robotics models at zoning and building code regulations, instead of those silly game environments that DeepMind use for their RL demos. Replace those overpriced and incompetent tradespeople and builders. They do not have enough real competition and the work quality suffer. Since importing labor from mexico is politically unpopular, use robotics instead. It plays well with both sides of the aisle. Time for the blue collar workforce to experience disruption.
Re: The Pretty Good House
#16I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
No. That’s still a lottery and you are basically saying I’m paying more, so I expect a better service. This does not guarantee results. At all.
What you want is a third party.
Someone who understands the trade and the codes and will check in on the building site daily and will make sure everything is being done correctly. And if it’s not, will stop work and put everyone in their place.
I frankly have no idea what the term for that is in America, but we call them freelance foremen where I’m from. Current going rate per month is roughly 1.5x minimum wage in my country.
May sound like a lot of money for someone just doing checking, but that’s only until you find out how expensive lack of oversight can be.
Ask around, many building companies offer these services, so company a builds the house, and an inspector from unrelated company b does the daily inspection. But ideally you’d find a one man band man, who’s really gonna be on your side.
Re: The Pretty Good House
#17I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
You might have trouble finding good builders for such a small job. Depends on the market I suppose. Also you'll run in to restrictions on some land, some areas will not let you build really small places that are out of proportion to the neighbourhood. Depends how fancy you're talking.
But doing a really nice small space is a great strategy for saving money. You can use nice materials since you dont have a lot. Doing a lot of quality built-ins (cabinetry and the like) also will make a huge difference -- and is a necessity when going small.
Re: The Pretty Good House
#18I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
I've done this twice by hiring a family friend as the builder once, and hiring a one-man builder another time, both times it worked out for me, was mostly headache-free, they both had excellent worksmanship. I built with a big company once and it was a nightmare. There are always headaches though, you need to expect them so you don't go crazy when it inevitably arrives. Good luck! :)
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Re: The Pretty Good House
#19I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
No. That’s still a lottery and you are basically saying I’m paying more, so I expect a better service. This does not guarantee results. At all. What you want is a third party. Someone who understands the trade and the codes and will check in on the building site daily and will make sure everything is being done correctly. And if it’s not, will stop work and put everyone in their place. I frankly have no idea what the…
This is what a builder would do in North America, they're the general contractor and will generally budget for you, manage the project and the trades. They'll ensure quality and be your point of contact. Typically where I'm at they charge 15% of the total time and materials of the build.
Re: The Pretty Good House
#20I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
No. That’s still a lottery and you are basically saying I’m paying more, so I expect a better service. This does not guarantee results. At all. What you want is a third party. Someone who understands the trade and the codes and will check in on the building site daily and will make sure everything is being done correctly. And if it’s not, will stop work and put everyone in their place. I frankly have no idea what the…
> Someone who understands the trade and the codes and will check in on the building site daily and will make sure everything is being done correctly. And if it’s not, will stop work and put everyone in their place. I frankly have no idea what the term for that is in America ...
Shadow builder.