How can you avoid common mistakes during a custom home build?

Many problems that plague custom homes are not the result of ‘poor workmanship’, but rather errors in sequence, insufficiencies in documentation, and critical decisions being made at the ‘wrong time’ by the ‘wrong person’. A single error in the framing can be rectified in a day, but overestimating construction cost allowances for budget purposes can have repercussions on almost every subsequent decision for the next 10 months. Read more about advanced build.

Building Custom Homes in Columbia, SC: Control Points to Ensure Success, Questions to Ask Builders of Custom Homes. These questions will reveal whether a builder is able to build a custom home or simply market and sell a custom home.

Qualify the builder on process, not portfolio

This doesn’t reveal how they were priced, how they were scheduled, and how they were supervised to complete those homes to a high standard. Real due diligence is hidden behind the homes’ photos.

Ready to Build Your Custom Home?

Planning a custom home in Columbia, SC, starts with choosing the right builder and having a clear plan from day one. If you’re ready to turn your ideas into a well-designed, quality-built home, contact an experienced Columbia custom home builder today. Discuss your vision, budget, timeline, and property requirements with a professional team that can guide you through every stage of the building process.

Columbia custom home builders are rated based on the homes that they have completed in the past, their ability to complete homes on time and within budget, and the quality of construction. Reviewing the past work of several builders will give you an idea of what to expect from each builder, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they work with clients. In particular, we like to ask each builder to list the last three homes that they completed, and which of those homes were completed late. We then like to get as much information as possible about why each of the late-completed homes was completed late, as this will give us great insight into the builder’s processes and how they handle problems that arise. It is also very telling if the builder is evasive when we ask for this type of information.

Four questions that reveal operating discipline

1. How many active jobs does the assigned project manager carry, and who covers when that person is off-site?
2. Are trade partners bid per project or held under standing agreements, and what happens when a bid comes in over the carried number?
3. What is the documented process for a client-initiated change, from request to signed authorization?
4. Which line items are allowances rather than fixed costs, and on what basis were those allowances set?

Lock decisions in the order that money demands

By design, almost all design decisions can be reversed for a cost. This cost will typically increase as the designer is deciding on the lower cost decisions (i.e. Cabinets) and putting off the higher cost decisions (i.e. The floor plan).

Use the rough-in walkthrough properly

Walking through the framed shell of the house with the electrician and the plumber there, you can mark up the outlet height, the switch location, the shower valve location, etc. And those can be changed for free at this point. Then within 24 hours you can write up the changes in writing and have the trade(s) sign off on them.

Build a budget that anticipates the site

The largest cost overruns are typically caused by unpriced conditions. These are typically different from the finishes that the owner has specified for the home and can cost thousands of dollars more than anticipated. Often these conditions are not even looked for until long after the contract has been signed and the work has begun. Some of the typical unpriced conditions are rock, high water table, poor bearing soils, long utility runs, and many others.

1. Commission geotechnical and survey work before finalizing the price, not after.
2. Convert soft allowances into real quotes for the three or four largest categories, typically cabinetry, windows, flooring, and mechanical systems.
3. Hold a contingency the client controls separately from the builder's contingency, and agree in advance what each covers.
4. Price the exterior work fully, including driveway, drainage, and landscaping, which are the items most often trimmed and most often regretted.

Inspect what will be covered up

Note: work completed in compliance with the local building codes for the project does not mean that work was completed of good quality to last 20 years or more. The details of quality work are such items as air-sealed top plates; proper flashing at wall penetrations; long lap of drainage plane; properly installed insulating materials (without voids or compression).

If you are weighing your options for custom homes Columbia has to offer, favor a builder who invites independent third-party inspections onto the jobsite at the foundation, rough-in, and pre-drywall stages. These are typically very cost-effective when compared to the cost of change orders, and can expose defects before they cause a series of costly callbacks to repair.

Control change orders before they control the schedule

Unpriced, undocumented, verbally approved change orders are typically very bad. Waste is generated as small change after small change is approved in a haphazard manner. The cost of the changes is not included in the final draw.

A workable rule

No work will proceed on a Change until the cost and any resulting impact to the Schedule have been stated in writing and signed off by the Client. A two-week delay in receiving materials for one item can result in idling of up to three trades and may cause the project to exceed a rate lock or a lease expiration.

The single decision-maker for the client rule is best implemented when paired with the fixed weekly site meeting rule. In this way, you avoid the generation of more waste by the conflicting instructions of two equal clients than by any material shortage.