The Path To Finding Better Building
How to Find a Good Custom Home Builder
Finding a custom home builder is sometimes a matter of asking people for recommendations. If there are some good prospects in your locality, you will likely hear about them from different people. Otherwise, check with the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) or any other similar association. Or do it the traditional way by looking up prospects in your yellow pages or asking your town office for referrals.
Narrowing Down Your Prospects
Before choosing a custom home builder, it’s good to speak to several prospects. There are three goals you want to happen during all this interviewing.
First, make sure the builder understands the type of custom home you want, and that he has experience building similar homes or building homes in your desired area.
Second, you’d like to know more about his general experience as a home builder. According to the NAHB, these are the things you should know about your prospects:
> Permanent business address (this usually indicates stability)
> Reputation with suppliers and banks in the community
> Breadth and length of industry experience
The NAHB says home builders usually take 3-5 years to establish themselves in the industry; hence, the longer they’ve been around, the more likely they can finance a custom home and stay around after a project is completed.
> Record at the Better Business Bureau
> Coverage of workers compensation and general liability insurance (ask for proof that they are adequately insured)
> Former customers’ feedback (ask for a few names of people you can call as references)
The third goal you’d like to work on is building rapport with your prospects. Obviously, this will be quite crucial. It can be excruciating to be forced to work with a builder you dislike.
Asking for Quotes
As soon as you have all the above information, you should be able to zero in on two or three names. This is much better than having a single prospect for reasons of comparison. You can even tell your prospects that you’re comparing their estimates. Usually, they will compete for your business and give you a cheaper estimate without changes in quality.
However, you really have to spend time collecting estimates. You want to be sure that your budget is just right – not too much that you’ll be wasting money on unnecessary things, and not too little that quality will be sacrificed.
Of course, the builder of your choice should have all the important information they need to prepare an accurate estimate. Lastly, do understand that no matter how good your builder is with estimates or which estimate you actually approved, there will always be at least a 10{887edc46c6408197482f05eb8e6699deec39ead55de6f91c250cca0855d87f3e} overrun because of incidental expenses, such as change orders, can never be totally avoided.