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The Owner-Builder Book
So a few years latter when I decided that I could afford a new home, I asked my friend how he had built such an amazing house for so little. He pointed me to "The Owner-Builder Book." When I saw the subtitle to the book, I was a little suspicious: "How you can save over $100,000 in the building of your custom home." I had seen a few too many infomercials making similar promises, but my friend had done it, so I figured that I could too.
Now, a year later, I have completed building my $550,000 home for $320,000. Much of my 41% savings can be directly attributed to this book:
Chapter 1: You Can Save $100,000
Chapter 2: Learn The Wealth-Building Secret
This is the pep-talk part of the book written to give you incentive
to read the next 300 or so pages. This chapter talks about how custom
homebuilders know and use the ideas in this book all the time. Ever seen
an ad for a "builder's own home"? Why are they always the upper-end
homes? Hmm.
Chapter 3: Contractors Aren't What You Think They Are
Chapter 4: You Can Manage Better Than a Contractor
Chapter 5: You Will Profit By Building a True Custom House
These chapters dispel myths about contractors. Hint: A contractor is
very simply a project manager, and usually not a very good one at that.
Among other things, they rarely shop around for better material prices.
They usually use the same lumberyard that they have always gone to. I
saved over $20,000 just by telling my framer that I was going to purchase
the materials from a different lumberyard, all he had to do was give me
the list.
Chapter 6: Conquer Details Room By Room and Save 20%
Chapter 7: How to Get the Subs on Your Side
Chapter 8: How to Build a Budget That is a Powerful Miracle Tool
Chapter 9: Commando Shopping Techniques
Chapter 10: How to Schedule the Work at a Savings
These chapters talk about how to actually save money: The key points are
planning, getting down the details of exactly what you want, (i.e. I want
two phone outlets in every room with two strands of cat5 and coax.), and
make sure to shop around. As an example, I had bids ranging from $5,000
to $15,000 for my electrical. One would assume that with 5G's you would
get less than with 15G's, right? Not necessarily: for $5,000 I got
everything that I wanted, plus I was able to add a bunch of outlets that
I hadn't thought of at the last minute for free cause the subcontractor
was a nice guy. Now I love that TV above Jacuzzi tub.
Chapter 11: How to Make Your Lender Swoon
Chapter 12: Paperwork Before You Begin
Chapter 13: Six Months to Victory
These chapters help you get the paperwork ready that you will need
throughout the process. Remember contracts with liquidated damages and
lien release forms! I only had problems with one subcontractor that my
wife had been responsible to get fill out our contract with and had never
done it. But, luckily their own contract, which my wife had signed with
them, covered most of what we needed. I even got to keep an extra $2,000
dollars because they didn't have time to come back and stain the stairs.
Let's see, $50 in stain and supplies, 3 hours time. Yeah, I'll take the
$2,000.
Chapter 14: Smooth Execution Saves Money and Improves Quality
Chapter 15: Mistakes You Can Avoid And Successes You Can
Achieve
These chapters drill into your head what planning and details mean. I
had one major problem over the course of building my home. The truss
company built my trusses wrong. It took them three more tries and fourweeks to get me a completed set. Because of my contracts and planning, I
cut the cost of the trusses by almost half, but the time hit was the most
damaging. My total time to completion was 7.5 months. I had planned for
6.
Chapter 16: If You Decide to Use a Contractor
The final chapter discusses how to choose and work with a general
contractor if you decide that being your own general is too much for you.
Conclusion
Don't leave with any illusions: this book will not build a custom home
for you. By planning and following through on the information in this
book, you too can build your dream home.
The first page of each chapter is available online at: http://ownerbuilderbook.com/book/Ch1.cfm, and a free CD-ROM with software templates for budgets, contracts, the entire book in MP3 format, and a previous edition of the eBook in PDF format is available. You can purchase The Owner-Builder Book from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit yours, read the book review guidelines, then hit the submission page.
This sounds really similar to those spam emails I was talking about earlier!
My uncle is a contractor, he builds spec and custom houses in Berkeley. I pity him. People are a**holes about their houses. Sometimes they ask for something, and then insist that it be ripped out, just because they saw something in House and Garden.My uncle gets paid for it, but who wants to waste time?
Now, anyone who builds custom needs to remember that there are 3 people important in your project.
You: the owner
The Builder
The architect
Now, if you cannot work together, then it will be a very painfull process. Remember that anything you ask for has to be feasible and buildable. If you develop a good relationship with an experianced architect, and a builder that is used to custom jobs, not just 'tract houses' then you should be fine. Also, remember that you have to live in the house, so make it comfortable, not trendy.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Building you own house doesn't look like a job for a software engineer in my opinion. I'm sure the software deadlines would never be hit if all the engineers here oversaw the building of their house.
1) Why would it fall down? It's not like you built it yourself, you just acted as your own contractor. The contractor doesn't build anything, they just hire the people who do.
You're doing the work the contractor does. Not everyone will have the patience to run through all the steps in the book. Therefore, people hire contractors to do all this for them.
This book will appeal to a rather limited audience who has the time and energy to do all this themselves. Despite the savings, most people would rather "take the easy way out".
I am the evil aardvark!
Most contractors are idiots, I am glad to see this book agrees. Remember when dealing with most "profesionals" that they usually have side deals going. While they are working for you this time, they alwasy work with their people. Their prime interests are not yours. That is why they will steer you towards certain yards and certain sub contractors. Not becuase they are the best or the cheapest but because they get a kick back.
A peice of advice not mentioned, from personal experience. While the contractor and the sub-contractors may be who you deal with they are not the ones doing the work. The work crews are the ones that are acutally attaching things to other things. A $60 investment in pizza or beer dropped by the site one day will pay of huge in the long run. If the crews personally like you then they will take more care in constructing your house and be friendlier to change requests. I have seen crews who had been taken care off take all the bad material out of the construction piles (warped or knotty studs i.e.) and place them to be moved to another site for use simply because the homeowner thought enough of them to bring them coffee in the morning. They put the good materials in this guys house and the crap went to everyone else.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
Not everyone can do it. Especially if your work and other commitments aren't flexible enough to allow it.
"A contractor is very simply a project manager, and usually not a very good one at that."
:-) I think I will have to go with the professionals to handle the work. )
Knowing a friend who's father built a quite expensive house. As well as knowing contractors myself. I can attest that this is not always correct. You have to understand that a contractor knows the people to go to, and generally who to trust and who not to trust.
If a contractor can save money he will, but unless he is a bad contractor (in which case he won't be around long), they won't purchase the lowest quality materials just because they are cheap. They try to find a happy medium.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem with hiring a contractor is the fact that you have to pay the contractor on top of everyone else. You have to remember though, that you are paying for the contractors time spent in arranging contracts and getting the right people together at the right time. If you take all of that upon your own shoulders, then you are also taking the stress of finding the right people, controlling them, getting good contracts, etc.
If I had the extra money, and a choice. I would hire a quality contractor (one that had been recommended to me), since I don't have the time or the strength really to handle all of the work necessary for proper contracting.
It is true though, that if you are knowledgable on prices for various products, and services, and are willing to take on the work. It is better for you to do the work then the contractor, since you might be able to find deals that the contractor wouldn't know about due to unforeseen circumstances.
In general though, this sounds like a useful book for people who are willing to put in the effort needed to handle a large project like this. (But for my future $1,000,000+ home that I am planning on buying.
~ kjrose
Hmmm... isn't that the same argument PHBs use to justify choosing Microsoft over Linux?
That's not to mention whether or not they have the money to buy the land that goes under said $300K custom home.
One issue with getting a custom home opposed to one that is already there is that you not only have to start paying morgtage/loans on the custom home and the land it's on, but you also have to continue paying rent for several months in wherever you're living while it's built!
Still, sounds like a good book for those in rural/suburban areas.
It sounds all fine and good to manage the construction of your own home, and even buy the lumber and whatever else you need. But you'd better have some carprentry experience before you do so.
I could save a lot of money by building my own file server too, but then I wouldn't have a support contract to go with it, and getting any warranty work done on it would suck, and would probably result in two companies pointing the finger at each other, saying "It's their fault!"
By the same token, if you go out and buy lumber, and have your framer put it together, and something goes wrong, he may say, "Well, the lumber you bought wasn't so great, there's only so much I can do." Going to the lumber company results in, "The framer must have done something to the wood, that was my best pressure-treated.." If your framer picks out the wood, then you definitely a case and can put it solely on his shoulders.
This is just an example, IANAC (but my brother is).
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
If you want to do it yourself, you had better know what the hell you are doing. You can't learn overnight reading a book. My house, which was all I could afford for a first home,is full of some clown who thought he was handy's botch jobs. It's a disaster! Cabinets hung too high to reach, and I'm a tall man! Doors are hung backwards, and nothing is level or plumb. Some things are worth paying for, like competent contractors.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Basically, this book is saying that if you have the skills of a project manager and the time, patience, and persistence to act as your own general contractor, you can save money and get a higher quality house.
No doubt true - IF you have those skills, if the plumber who used to beat you up in high school can't still intimidate you, and if you have the time.
You also need to consider, however, that most contractors/subcontractors in a given area form their own community, and generally will work together to take advantage of any "lone wolf" outside the system. You will also have a difficult time figuring out, e.g., who the good HVAC contractors are vs. the rip-off artists. This is something the general brings to the game that you can't duplicate.
Anyway, have fun!
sPh
Unemployment in May 2002 was 5.8%
This is not the great depression.
Commerce goes marching on. Besides this is a potential revenue source for geeks with project management skills. That could very well be your Custom Business book.
I feel that it is very applicable.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
Avoid the "edifice complex". Do you really need 4400 ft^2? Sure, I understand that a smaller house would stand out like a sore thumb in a smaller neighborhood, but thats a lotta house!
Every week in our real estate section we can find featured houses that are less than 5 years old, being sold by the people who built their "dream house" only to find that its now too big. IMHO a house that big is like a St. Bernard puppy, you don't realize how big it really is when it grows up, especially the cleanup!
Another pet peeve. Ever been in a 4400 ft^2 house that echos like a gym because the new owners can't afford nice drapes and furniture and art/mirrors to fill the place up?
If you can afford the neighborhood, the taxes, the furnishings, the maintenance and the upkeep of a house that big, then saving $100k might not be that high on your priority list.
My family of 5 live more than comfortably in a 2300 ft^2 house.
Here is a strategy that I think is even better than this for running cat5 and such:
The people who install home security systems tend to be extremely skillful about putting wires through walls. If you are getting a home security system, these people can often put your networking equipment through the walls for a small surcharge, and do it with much more ease than you could yourself. This was how the home my family bought, which was 30 years old and had exactly 2 phone jacks in it, was increased to 22 jacks over 2 lines plus cat5 in all the bedrooms, living room, rec room, plus coax from the satellite in a couple of the bedrooms and rec room as well.
That said, there are some really bad contracters out there. Some places have huge building booms (Toronto for instance :-) and all sorts of fly by night organizations and people are head contracting these days. Picking a good contractor can be harder that just doing it yourself.
My dad just had a brutal experience last year where he ended up doing a lot of the project management because the head contractor was so bad.
Either way, as somebody else said -- ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS take the time to buy the guys who are doing the work beer or coffee. Construction guys always do better work for somebody they know and think is an ok guy rather than some anonymous jerk who phones in complaints to their boss.
Among my immediate friends and acquaintances, *two* are still working in the IT field. Another is a certified Oracle DBA decorating cakes in a supermarket (last I heard), another is getting into marketing, a third is talking about opening a sub franchise store in the Middle East, and I'm signed up for some sysadmin training so I can get past the "ten years of related experience, but never in my job title" barrier. That's 66% unemployment, far beyond the unemployment rate in the great depression.
Really? Then by your own logic we have a 0% unemployment rate since all of my friends are gainfully employed in our chosen fields. Cool! I love this economy...
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that all statistics are lies, for the very reason that you demonstrated with your own "statistical analysis" of the situation.
I agree with the above posting, about contractors being more that project managers. Whoever said that they're just PMs, and not very good ones, obviously didn't work with my contractor. There's even more to it than their relationships with the subcontractors.
I recently build a custom home -- less than $500000 (USD), but not by much. I went with a highly recommend general contractor, who was not cheap.
At first, I was alarmed by how much money was going to the general contractor. But I was way out of my depth, and I was much happier than I would have been had I gone to a tract builder.
Then, the problems began, and I was so glad we had a good contractor on our side.
I can't imagine having to deal with all of these problems myself. Sometimes I wonder if the general contractor even made money on my house, after all the things he had to pay for!
So, be cautious before you think, "I'll do it myself; after all, what good is a general contractor?"
As with most generalities, this advice needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I use my real estate investments as my retirement vehicle (and legacy for my son) and as such look to appreciated value over decades, not years. My editorial of the advice:
(1) Don't buy in a new development *if* it's geographical/political boundaries allow for massive growth. Do buy if you can realistically predict the limits of the area's growth and the area's economic vitality.
(2) Short term, buy for structure and land. Long term, buy for land appreciation only. You can depreciate the stucture's cost (if you rent it out).
(3) The best thing to do is buy a home near the city, in a neighborhood that is beginning to revive itself. If it's a heap, don't throw good money after bad. Be willing to tear it down and build condos. Take a short-term hit for long-term return.
Best Windows Freeware
As an architect (technically, I've completed the IDP and I'll be taking the ARE very soon) I have to say that I have a different perspective. The role of an architect is not to add doodads. There are several perspectives, but fundamentally an architect adds value to your project, not to mention being legally required in many areas for a varitey of reasons - health, safety and public welfare being high on the list. Let me say at the outset that there are goofball architects, just as there are quack doctors and MBAs who have zero business sense. If your goal is to get a conventional house for the lowest possible dollars per square foot, there are architects who can help you. There are also archtiects who would hinder you. Take the book's point, shop around - talk to people - look at your options. For your first experience with building a house, a knowledgeable architect can guide you through the legal and financial minefield and hopefully get a more beautiful end result. The world is full of horror stories of financing scams, vanishing subcontractors, code problems that shut projects down, structural 'omissions' and on and on. Designing a good house takes a fair amount of skill. Most smart people can get a few of the 'balls in the air.' You can develop a decent floor plan, think through the basic cost implications of what goes where and have a sense of how it's going to work in three dimensions. This is usually enough to get someting built, but is the result 'good' or 'great'? Someone with experience designing buildings thoughfully (a.k.a. a good architect) will add value, both qualitatively and functionally. A cynic would say that the market for housing in America has pretty low standards for quality of materials and design. But this is YOUR house we're talking about - do you want the Windows 3.1 of houses? A structural engineer can also be an important part of the team. While many architects can do the structural engineering part of the design process, particularly for conventional houses, structural engineers can't do a lot of very important parts of the design process. SEs have stacks of code books and manuals that deal with their parts of building design, which are very important, but don't have a lot to do with the simple construction of houses. Their field of expertise doesn't cover things like the codes that relate to your family not burning to death in a fire. Another issue is 'plan stamping'. In areas where an archictect is required by law you may be tempted to try to find a scumbag to apply her seal to some pre-drawn plans. This is a bad idea. If you need the 'what's in it for me' reason try massive dollar costs. 'Stamped plans' are likely to have problems with local codes which can cost you tens of thousands of dollars in fines and rip-and-replace costs. I can fudge together shell scripts or bits of C++, but am I a programmer? No. Could I tackle a moderately complicated programming task myself? Maybe, but it would a nasty mess, inefficient, buggy and take a long time. I don't have that expertise even if I know a fair amount about how computers work and know what I like in user interfaces. Don't see architects as an enemy or hinderance. Look for one who wants to work with you in your way for your project and take advantage of her ideas and experience.