Building your own home
Boater wrote:
Gene wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:03:49 -0500, "Reginald P. Smithers III, Esq."
wrote:
We are thinking about using this downturn in the housing market to
build a new home, and acting as our own General Contractor. Has
anyone in the group done this and do they have any words of advice?
Yes, with three houses and two workshops. Not only was I General
Contractor, I was also 50% of the labor.
Your only real savings, in this market, will be sweat equity. You can
buy cheaper than you can build.... you just have to find an equally
desperate mortgagee and mortgagor.... or you could do it the seat
equity route, if you have the cash, tools, and a desire to make it
happen.
No bank is going to let *you* (as their mortgagor) serve as General
Contractor unless you hold a contractor's license.
Advice? You're crazy to even attempt it...... uh, but wasn't I
thinking about adding on to the workshop.....
.... Oh, never mind......
It's an incredible burner of time. I had to do it because the general I
hired to build a custom home in Northern Virginia turned out to be way
overextended financially from previous projects, and could not line up
the subs I wanted, and was teetering.
Took the builder to court, had a civil jury trial, and won a settlement
of more than $100,000. Never collected anything but the builder's
license bond from the state.
With the help of the lumberyard (who issued the construction bond) and
my bank, I took over when the foundation had been laid and the slabs
poured, hired a project manager to oversee the subs on salary and bonus,
and completed the house just a hair over budget. I had to be on the site
for about an hour at 6:30 AM just about every morning.
It was a huge house, ultra modern, with four full brick fireplaces,
nearly 4000 square feet on the main level, and another 3,000 square feet
finished in the basement. I looked it up on Zillow early last year and
it was valued at more than $1.5 million. The "crash" of the real estate
market apparently hit Northern Virginia hard, because when I looked it
up on Zillow earlier this evening, it was valued at about $1.1 million.
Just checked the second house I owned in Northern Virgina...it was the
one we sold to build the custom house. I paid $87k for it - nice
builder's subdivision house - and sold it about five years later for
$160,000, I think. Zillow has it at $600,000 and change. Not bad, and
the blue spruce trees I planted there in the mid-1970s are at least 40
feet tall and full triple wides.
Nice story, and pictures?
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