Selecting a Builder

Why supply chain issues persist and how builders mitigate them.

Although professional builders do everything in their power to keep home construction on schedule, they face more challenges than ever.

The answer will have an impact on the selections you make and the final home cost.

Potential clients often ask for our homes’ average cost per square foot. The question is understandable. Price per square foot is a metric the real estate industry uses to gauge the competitiveness of resale homes,

The best custom builders understand that service is as important as product.

When choosing someone to build your new custom home, there’s a truth that you ignore at your peril: your ultimate satisfaction has as much to do with your day-to-day experience of the project as with the final result.

How do you identify a great custom builder—and choose the best one for your needs?

There’s an oft-repeated quip that building a custom home is as much about the experience as the result.

Builders need a lot of information to arrive at an accurate number

Every now and then a homeowner will call to ask how much our new homes cost per square foot. The answer, of course, depends on a range of variables. Some of these are obvious, and others less so.

Your home builder needs to navigate a maze of government regulations—homeowners can help make the process easier

A successful new-home build is a predictable one, with no unpleasant surprises. Predictability comes from good planning, as well-planned projects tend to stay on budget and on schedule.

The short answer is no, and here’s why that’s a good thing.

Some builders are what one might call ‘order takers.’ They do anything the homeowners want within the constraints of budget, timetable, and zoning or code regulations. That’s understandable: everyone wants happy customers and positive reviews.

But the best builders understand that an anything-you-want approach really doesn’t serve customers. We would go further and caution people to beware the builder who never pushes back.

Trust? Maybe. Verify? Definitely.

A September 2011 Business Week article reported on a Texas home improvement contractor that hired a writer to post 200 positive reviews on sites like Yelp and Google. The story went on to cite other examples and estimated the percentage of fake online reviews at close to 30 percent.

Such articles have been multiplying, with a Google search for “can you trust online reviews?”

It’s natural to have questions and changes when building a custom home. Prevent surprises and delays by getting answers from the top.

There are lots of things homeowners can do to keep their building project running smoothly. Number one is making timely product choices, but another key action is to direct all change requests and questions, no matter how small, to the builder or the builder’s representative (usually the project superintendent).