The Most Important Thing You Should Be Looking For In A Custom Home Builder?

Whether it's a custom home you are going to build or a custom new cottage the most important thing you are going to have to decide on is who you want to actually build it.

Hiring your custom home builder or general contractor is more important then who draws the plans or designs the kitchen.

Most people, when they are thinking about hiring a builder to build their custom home tend to think of two things right away:

1. How much is the home builder going to charge me to build the home?
2. How good is the quality of the home that they build?

The sad thing is that it is usually in that order that people think, they think price first and quality second. Here's a little secret, when the house is built and you have paid all the bills almost all successful contractors end up costing you the same amount of money. Regardless of what you have been told at the start about what their fee is or how they will bill you the end cost of the entire project usually ends up about the same amount of money. The builders who are cheaper then all of their competition don't survive because they don't make enough money to cover their overhead, make a living and still give a warranty. They end up to far behind in debt and closeup shop to work for someone else.

Since the real cost of hiring contractors is basically the same then we should move on to the quality of the home. This is where the good builders and the not so good builders separate themselves. When you are a builder of custom homes you are more like a project manager. You pick the people and sub trades that are going to complete the project and then you management how much they get paid, how long it takes them to do their work and at what quality that they achieve the work with as little flaws as possible. If you can manage that then the end project should be a very high quality.

Its not hard to distinguish a quality custom home builder, you just have to see the pictures of some of the projects and that should tell you if they can complete your project to the standard that you expect. This just takes you asking the right questions and carefully looking at their past work.

Since the first two are actually fairly easy to figure out with a some due diligence there is one major thing that people tend to forget when prioritizing what to look for in a custom home builder and that is their attitude. 

A good sized cottage to construct should take anywhere from 6 months to a year depending on the when you start, the size of the home and the level of detail in the home. Your home builder is going to be the one person that you talk too, email, text or meet onsite for 6 to 12 months. A lot of times you are going to have to email back and forth 5 to 10 times a day, meeting on weekends and holidays, having phone meetings, discussing money, designs, plans, options, upgrades and problems when they arise. If you don't get along with your home builder then the wonderful experience of building a custom home or cottage will end up being the worst 6 to 12 months of your life.

Building a custom home or cottage is one of the biggest investments of your life and it should be one of the most exciting ones as well. If you don't get along with your contractor then you should be finding a different one. A rocky relationship between the homeowner the home builder will actually affect the project. When you don't get along with your contractor then you don't communicate well with and them with you, this starts to delay the project because decisions aren't made in a timely fashion and time slips away as the homeowner and the contractor try to ignore each other.

When building a custom home you need to be able to trust your contractor in a way that you can come to them with any idea you have for the home regardless of how crazy it is, their job is to tell you why it's crazy and impossible or if it isn't what the cost is and how it will affect the project as a whole. The whole point of a custom home is that it is custom to you the homeowner and nobody else, if you can't communicate your hopes and dreams for it to your contractor then it ceases to be a custom home for you the homeowner.

Take the time and meet with your contractor, get to know them. Get to know them at least enough to get a feeling of how they communicate and how the two of you get along in each other's company. 

In the last 17 years of building custom homes for people I have been able to get along with them so well that to this day if I see them on the street or in a restaurant we end up stopping and talking about life, family and the weather. We actually never talk about the house that I built them, by the end of the project I end up being more their friend then their builder.

Gone are the days with the rough, tough and gruff builder tells you what you are gonna get in your home and then hands you the bill and walks away. Custom home building today is a shared experience, it should be part learning experience for you the homeowner and part exciting and joyful as well as you see your dream come to life in your new custom home.

Remember that you want to enjoy building your custom home or cottage so take the time to find a builder that you can enjoy it with.

If you have any questions about custom home building or you would like to talk to me about building a custom home/cottage you can email me at greatlakescustomhomes@gmail.com

Rob Abbott

Great Lakes Custom Homes