You have a wonderful piece of land in a neighbourhood where you can envision your dream being built, now you are ready to hire someone to do the work! Building your own custom home is a big commitment financially, therefore it is vital that you take careful consideration prior to hiring a home builder. The person or company that you hire should communicate well, understand your vision and be reputable with previous clients. Below are 5 simple steps to guide you through hiring a home builder in Vancouver:
1. Ask Around
Your first step towards hiring a builder should be to ask your circle of friends if anyone has any good relationships with contractors. Many successful builders rely on positive client testimonials and referrals to grow their businesses and to build an overall good reputation. Once you have a list of different custom home builders, start your own in-depth research about each one of them.
2. Do Your Research
Once you have a list of home builders start doing your own due diligence. Check their websites and social media pages. Look into their current and past resume of projects, do they actually specialize in custom homes? Check to see if the builder has a testimonial page, also look into local reviews on websites such as Houzz or Yelp.
3. Initial Contact/Interview
After your own due diligence, you should be able to narrow down your list of custom home builders to a few contacts. Begin by contacting each one of them to start the interview process. At SC Morgan, we begin the process with a face to face consultation as we value a strong working relationship with our clients from the get go. We believe the client-builder relationship is the single most important part of the home building process and that client collaboration is vital to the overall success of the project.
At this point you should be able to see whether or not the builder has the type of communication skills you are looking for. If their e-mail or phone response time is not sufficient, or their communication is not clear then you may want to consider this a red flag or address the situation right away. SC Morgan believes in transparency throughout the design build process and prides itself on effective communication from start to completion of the project.
4. Understand Their Processes
Once you have narrowed down the search, request specific information about the builder’s processes such as a sample contract, proposed method of compensation, a sample budget (how is billing tracked?), a sample construction schedule, and a sample warranty. To view SC Morgan’s process, click here.
5. Hiring The Builder
The final decision should come from a level of comfort not necessarily who comes in with the best price for the work. After all, you are putting your trust in the expert’s hands, the last thing you would want is for a low bid contractor to cut corners or sacrifice quality in order to get the job done for less money. Most of the time, the lowest bidder will often end up costing the client more by the time the job is complete in order to remediate mistakes and pricing oversights. With all things being equal it is ultimately better to spend more and get someone you are comfortable with.
At this point you should have enough information to have a good understanding of which home builder you would like to hire to build your custom home. Meet with your builder and start to go over specific details and expectations you may have. Remember to ask questions and ensure you are keeping a paper trail on all correspondence and change orders in order to avoid discrepancies or misunderstandings.
Ultimately it is important to build a relationship with your builder and learn to trust their judgment and expertise once the process begins.