The decisions · Choosing a Builder
Choosing Between Three Builders
Three builders will show you three beautiful portfolios and three numbers that differ by a lot. The portfolio tells you what they photograph, not what they are like to build with.
Bring the drawings at whatever stage they are. An honest range and the decisions that move it, before anyone quotes.
Licensed
General contractor, licensed in the state of Florida
Self-perform
Dewatering, SOE and deep foundations in house
Leadership
Delivered Fifth Avenue and Central Park West interiors
Open book
Where the contract is cost-plus, the books open
Everybody's photographs are good
Portfolio quality is close to meaningless as a differentiator at this level — everyone has a photographer. What varies enormously is who actually runs your job, whether they self-perform anything, how they handle a concealed condition, and whether the low number is low because the scope is smaller.
What to actually ask
- Who is the project manager, and how many other jobs do they have?
- What do you self-perform, and what is subcontracted?
- Show me a change order from a recent project and explain it.
- What is in your allowance schedule, and are those numbers real?
- Can I speak to an owner whose project went badly?
How we handle it
- 01Give you the project manager's name and current workload.
- 02Be explicit about what we self-perform and what we subcontract.
- 03Show you real change orders from real projects.
- 04Provide references including a project that had problems.
- 05Tell you where a competitor is better suited than we are.
The most revealing question is the last one. Every builder has had a project go badly. One who says otherwise is either new or not being straight, and how they describe the difficult one tells you more than the whole portfolio.
Said plainly
Where we stop
If your project is a straightforward production-standard house, a production builder will do it faster and cheaper. We are not the right choice for every job and we will say which.
FAQ
Common questions
- Why do the three numbers differ so much?
- Usually scope and allowances rather than efficiency. Compare what is included before comparing totals.
- Should I take the lowest?
- Only after confirming all three cover the same work. They very often do not.
- What references should I ask for?
- One recent, one two years old so you see how it aged, and one that went badly.
- Does self-performing matter?
- On difficult ground in Florida, considerably. It is the difference between controlling the schedule and hoping.
What we build
Custom Homes
A custom home is the only project where every decision is still open, which is exactly why it is the easiest one to lose control of financially.
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Waterfront Construction
On a waterfront lot the building is often the straightforward part. The water table, the seawall, the flood elevation and the permitting are what decide the program and a large share of the cost.
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Whole-House Renovation
Renovating an existing house is harder to price than building a new one, because a meaningful part of the scope is behind finishes nobody has opened.
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Historic Restoration
In a historic district the approval process governs the design, and it operates on a timescale that has nothing to do with construction.
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Additions & Second Stories
An addition is constrained by a building that was designed for a different life. Whether the existing foundation and structure can carry the new load is the first question and it is not always answered yes.
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Guest Houses & Accessory Structures
A guest house is a small building governed by disproportionately complicated rules. Zoning, not design, determines what is possible.
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More the decisions
Fixed Price or Cost-Plus
The contract type decides who carries the risk of the unknown, and both answers are legitimate. What is not legitimate is a fixed price on drawings that cannot support one.
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Allowances & Selections
An allowance is a placeholder for a decision you have not made. A contract full of them is a contract whose final number has not been decided.
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The Program
Every owner is told a number at the start and most projects take longer. The gap is usually permitting, long-lead items and decisions — rarely the building itself.
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Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.