Today was a pretty fun, but quick day. As I mentioned previously, Builder B is a father/son general contracting company. We knew the son from mutual friends, but had never met his dad before. Today we did just that. The son invited us to his parent’s home to view their house, which they recently built three years ago, and to get introduced to not only his dad, but his mom as well. His dad owns the general contracting company, the son works there, and the mom does all of the accounting. Talk about keeping it in the family!

Their home was gorgeous! Definitely high quality and the attention to detail was extremely prevalent. It’s a northwest lodge style home, similar to the son’s house with natural wood finishes, slate tile, stone fireplace, wood flooring, and earth-toned decor. Although it’s not the style of home that we’ll be building, the finishes were beautiful and the craftsmanship really showed. It was easy to see the pride in the type of work that they do.

The entire family was than welcoming and they readily answered all of our questions. One of our main questions was about who was going to be working on our project – the son or the dad? Both had a variety of experiences – the dad started out as a carpenter and has been building one or two homes at a time for the past 30 years; the son has been building homes with his dad or for other builders for the past 10 years and has built a higher quantity of homes. Their response to our question was that they would be interchangeable on the project and that they would both be involved in building our home. It’s apparent that the son would be the main point of contact on our project and be the one managing it. The dad would be there for advice (if needed) and help if the son wasn’t able to be at our house for one reason or another.

We also talked a bit more about their typical contract to make sure that we understood the general idea. They work off of a true “cost plus” contract. Meaning that our invoices will be broken down into whatever was purchased for the home plus an additional markup for their overhead + profit. This is different than the time + materials contracts that we’re used to hearing about. Time is not a calculated into their type of contract.

I mentioned previously that we gave Builder B a set of our preliminary plans for him to review and give us a more accurate cost for our house. He said that based on the size of our house and our initial thoughts on how we’re going to finish the house, the cost increased from $115 (initial thought before seeing our plans) to $130 per square foot. That said, he did mention that the $130 per square foot is really a budget level opinion of cost and that it could be built for less (depending on the finishes we choose). That price is simply for the house costs, so taxes and overhead + profit are also in addition to the price. Another thing not included in the $130 per square foot is the cost for utilities and any major hard/landscaping. So really, when you factor everything in and the divide by the square footage of our house, the cost is truly $180 per square foot.

We had to cut our meeting a little short with a sick little one at home and babysitters calling. It was great to get to meet both of them though, tour their beautiful home and see the family dynamic.

Builder E

When we interviewed Builder C on the property about a month ago, we met one of our new neighbors.  They had a great experience with a builder and recommended us to talk with him.  This builder began his construction business as a carpenter – both a framer and a finish carpenter (he framed our neighbor’s house).  His business is built on framing & carpentry today and is just starting to get into the custom home construction business.  We met Builder E at Starbucks to discuss our house plans.  He was very interested in our project and asked a lot of questions.  He was very honest and told us all about his experience (or lack thereof) in building custom homes.  He’s done a handful of total remodels throughout the Puget Sound area, but our house would be the first that’d do from the ground up.

Contract & Cost

Builder E’s contract would be set up as time + materials. This basically means that we would pay for all of the materials and he would have a set amount that he charges to manage the project each month.  When he used his own crew to do the work, such as the framing and finish carpentry, he would bill them out as any other sub would.

Update

On March 25^th, Builder E called and let us know that after reviewing our plans in more detail, he thinks the project would be too much to tackle for his first custom build.  We really appreciate him being honest with us, and we were having the same feeling as well.  He was really up front and professional about it – and even recommended us to another custom builder in the area.

Builder D

Today we met with Builder D.   Builder D was the only General Contractor that we met at The Seattle Home Show that we thought would be a good fit for us.  We met them at their second office in Issaquah, WA.  This builder is based out of Enumclaw and builds in cities throughout King County.  The company was started by the grandfather of the current owner, and now his son has followed in his own footsteps and works for the company as well – four generations of custom home builders!  The current owner “dad” has been working for the family business since 1964.  Before meeting with them in person I did a lot of research on the company and they do a wide variety of work.  From small simple cabins to the highest end luxury custom homes.  Their quality of work in all their projects is evident in the photos that we were shown (and the ones we found online).

The company has about 10 employees, ranging from the owner/manger “dad”, the scheduler/supervisor “son” and a handful of framers and carpenters.  They sub out the other subs, but the framing and finish work they do in house.  One thing that is very important to us is the finish work, both in the woodwork and the tile work.  It’s reassuring to know that Builder D has staff members that can do great finish work (at least for the carpentry).  Speaking of finish work – Builder D was extremely knowledgeable because he has built a lot homes similar in style to ours.  Which we really appreciate and we think that it’s good to have that experience – that way our’s isn’t the first one that they’ve built.

Schedule

Builder D is pretty flexible with schedule and how he manages it.  He can come up with a full blown MS Project Schedule for us – but he typically finds that it’s overkill and clients don’t use it nor understand it.  His style is a bit more simple and low key.  They meet weekly with the client and give us a weekly update on what work was performed in the past week and what the next week look ahead will be.  In addition, they’ll itemize everything that they might be waiting on us for, and anything that is critical path.  That way we’re informed with what’s in front of us and not worry so much about the big picture schedule.  That said, if we want the full schedule we can have it.   After reviewing our plans, we asked him how long he thought it would take to build our house – just off the top of his head.  To our surprise he said 12 to 15 months!  15 months seems like a VERY long time to build the house.  I think with that long of a scheduled build, I’d definitely want to at least get a general idea of what the overall schedule was.

Contract & Cost

Builder D has a different set up than others that we’ve talked with.  Builder D sets up the project originally as a cost + percentage to come up with the overall cost for the job.  Up front, we get to see every one of the bids that comes in the door that we’re going to use.  Everything is an open book.  Then we can negotiate and change items/subcontractors if we need to.  Then we’ll work together with the builder to come up with the total cost for the contract.  Based on that, we’ll then have a fixed bid contract.  That’s the amount that we’ll get from the bank and the builder will need to get the project done for that amount.  That said – if we don’t have all of our finishes figured out, we’ll have allowances for those items.  If we go over the allowance, we’ll need to cover it with cash.  If we end up saving on some allowances, we can allocate that money towards a different item in the house, or have a less expensive house.  Our goal is to have everything picked out prior to bidding so we’ll be able to know what our items/finishes are and get an accurate bid up front.  Hopefully that will limit the allowances we have for the house and we’ll have a really good idea of what our house will cost before even swinging the first hammer.   Just based on what we discussed with Builder D, he said that he would give a really rough estimate of $150 – $200 per square foot to build our house.  Of course, that’s a wide swing in price and if we move further in the interview process with him, we’ll need to get a better estimate.

Deposit

Builder D doesn’t charge a deposit if we wanted to work with him.  He believes that his policy is not to charge anyone for anything until we’ve actually done the work.  I really like that philosophy.  If we need a lot of his help prior to construction starting (for example, permitting) then we’d just pay him an hourly rate.

Today we met with Builder B as a follow-up to our first meeting.  We met Builder B at his home which he recently finished building in the fall.  It’s a very nice home and the floorplan reminded us a little of our layout.  It is a one story with a walkout basement.  The master was on the main with the other bedrooms were downstairs with an extra bonus room downstairs as well.  It was great to get to see the details of his work up close – we really got a true feeling for how he builds homes and how he would build ours.  That said, the style of the house was completely different than what we want ours to be – his was northwest craftsman and we want ours to feel more bright & white.

We spoke more about the pricing of the home to get some more details about what was and wasn’t included in the original price per square foot that he gave us.  He also told us that some of the utilities and major exterior items like a full driveway also wasn’t included in the price per square foot that he initially told us about ($115).  Builder B informed us that the $115 per square foot pricing does includes a 5% supervisory fee.  On top of that, he adds an additional 12% for overhead & profit and then tax on top of that (8.6% where our house will be built).  Tax is added afterwards because he will purchase all of the materials without tax using his reseller’s permit.  That way we’re not paying for tax twice, and that way we can use the lower tax rate of 8.6% instead of the 9.5% tax elsewhere in the Seattle area.  Washington State’s Department of Revenue has broken down all of the tax laws for custom building a house in Washington.  They give some great examples like:

Example of a Contractor’s Estimate (including tax)

We discussed our house and some of the selections with Builder B at his house and over the next week or so he’s going to spend some time reviewing the plans in more detail and giving us a better idea of the cost to build our house (not just a cost per square foot estimate).  As it stands now, with some really rough numbers for utilities and exterior hardscaping, plus the $115 per square foot + 12% overhead & profit + tax the total cost per square foot is really $165 per square foot.  We’ll see what it is truly when he looks at our plans in more detail.  We’re looking forward to getting a really accurate bid before we sign a contract with any builder.