The relationship that you have with your builder or general contractor is by far the most important one that one will have while building or remodeling a home. I’m sharing my tips on how to hire a builder for a remodel house flip.
While my husband had previously remodeled two homes, I was a virgin to major home renovations / house flipping. Sol House was no small project by any stretch of the imagination.
In How To Hire an Architect to Remodel a House, I discuss our robust process to find the best suited architect. It may come as no surprise that the builder search was exceedingly vigorous. We are trusting them with a significant amount of money.
As I understood it, builders take on three major responsibilities:
1) With great attention to detail, bring the owner(s) and architect(s) vision to life
2) Dutifully manage a great financial investment
3) Curate and manage a team of expert subcontractors that will also support the first two points
Sol House needed a builder who was passionate, sustainably-minded, creative, meticulous, budget savvy, honest and trustworthy.
To find the best suited general contractor for our project we collected recommendations from various sources: our architect, word of mouth, Houzz, Next Door, guidance from other general contractors that couldn’t take the project on, referrals from our realtors, construction yard signs and so forth.
We first built a collective list of 17 preferred builders.
From there we did an initial research online —reviewed their online portfolio, social media and online reviews.We eliminated one builder because their project minimum was too high. We crossed off two based on bad online reviews and three for not being a good fit.
Now down to twelve builder contenders, we called each one to have a brief preliminary discussion. Our agenda was to get to know them, inquire about availability, project interest, average completion timeline and any builder particulars. Three builders were unavailable for several months or years out.
We met six general contracts on site to walk through the property in person. All builders were asked to bid on the project; we ultimately received four bids. We were transparent with each builder about getting multiple competitive bids.
Before making a decision, our architect team performed a competitive bid analysis comparing apples to apples.
Follow up calls were scheduled to review each bid, line by line with the respective contractor. We asked clarify questions for anything that stood out in the comparison exercise. Additionally, each builder was asked what was and was not in their wheel house. It was important to know if they had any concerns about the project. We probed into any big discrepancies between bids to gain a deeper understanding of possible project complexities.
There are two types of bids, a Cost Plus bid (transparent cost breakdown of materials, labor + a builder’s fee) and a Fixed Price bid (non-transparent bundled materials, labor + builder’s fee).
With a Cost Plus bid you have more transparency and are much more involved in financial decisions — pick your poison.
It is important to know that these bids took about 3-4 weeks to come in. In retrospect, we would have preferred to have selected our builder before beginning the architecture design process began.
We asked our builder to sit in on a design meeting in a consultant capacity to understand what designs may be expensive and avoid any foreseeable design-driven building complications.
We chose a General Contractor who’s cost-plus bid was right in the middle and who had all the creative, savvy, and breadth of experience to bring Sol House to life. His name is Moody Andrews with Roost Homes and came highly recommended by a well respected friend in the Junior League.
We spoke with multiple references, visited properties built by Moody and signed 3 TAB (Texas Association of Builder) contracts: cost-plus, express limited home warranty and performance standards and disclosure. Prior to signing, we had a real estate lawyer review the contracts so that we clearly understood the agreements. Legal expenses were a line item in our remodel budget.
This article details everything I wish I would have known before purchasing the property.
I can apply these principles to any size project, anywhere. We curated a dream team and it was time to break ground and rebuild Sol House.