re: General Contracting your Home Build

I recently built my house and was the GC with very liitle knowledge about building a house. The construction was an amazing success.

You can do it depending on a few things. I had a couple of friends and a coworker that were enormous help by having done it themselves and they were more helpful than anyone. Having someone you can call for solid advice throughout the process is invaluable.

Also, I work shift work which allowed me a lot of opportunities to be around the jobsite during the day and keep an eye on things. If you work and M-F job with business hours, that will make things more difficult.

As far as subcontractors. Try to use only ones that come highly recommended from peronal friend references. I did not always select the cheapest bid if it was from someone with no references or I didn't know much about them. The only problems I had with subs during the construction was from the ones that I found on my own instead of the ones recommended by my friends.

Good luck.

Subs and suppliers don't have to know you are only building your house. Blow smoke up their arse. For all they know you are building 5-10 houses this year.

And yes, sometimes they don't show up when they are supposed to. You do have to stay on their arse sometimes. shite happens and they can't get to your job until they finish another. It only becomes a big deal after you have taken a few draws and have to pay interest.

$85-90/sf seems to be the going rate for the average high end home these days. That's about what I was looking to spend. Granite, crown and trim, nice appliances and fixtures, etc.

My builder is charging 8.5% of the estimated cost to build. I'm paying him a flat fee based on his estimate.

Ashy, what's the name of your company?

I did mine about 15 years ago. Cost for a 2500 living was just a bit over 50 grand. I was a shift worker, so I did have time to be on the job. I also knew people in the trade. One other thing I did was hire a home inspector. Had him come in 3 times as the build went on. First time was when the slab was about to be done to check plumming. Second was after the house was black in and all ruff elec,plumming and ac/heating was in place. The third was done when the house was finished. He only charged me $75 per inspection at the time. As thing progress, he did point out a few things that did save me big money.

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I am in the very early stages of this right now. Met with our builder last night. The system he has set up allows us to be our own general contractor and we pay a monthly fee to him to oversee and handle all subs. All of his pricing is set up beforehand. We can use our own subs or we can use ones he has previous relationships with. We pay the subs directly and he does not get a cut. This also allows to be as active as we want to be in the building process.