If you have a good relationship with him you can ask him how he feels about it. Losing a project is not only costly to a builder but it is a personal disappointment so he might appreciate your concern.

You have gone to the heart of the matter, macv. He's not losing the project because he is somehow at fault. While there are things I wish he had done differently... there are things I wish I had done differently as well. I have mixed feelings about calling a stop to this, and I am sure he does as well.

I am trying very hard to think of this as an expensive learning opportunity. :)

I do plan on having a conversation with him about it, but before I say anything, I was just wondering if there is any kind of generally accepted guidelines for compensating the GC in these kinds of situations.

Or, perhaps, just any stories from others on how they may have handled this kind of situation in the past.

Posters here would need to understand the situation better in order to properly answer your question. For example, why was a GC involved before the bid phase if, as it sounds, it was put out for competitive bid? What exactly was his role and what exactly did he do for you? And were his efforts during the design phase made with an implicit understanding that he would get the job and that it wouldn't be put out for bid? Are we to assume that this GC was one of the unsuccessful bidders?

alabamanicole, I have no advice but I'd like to say I'm sorry to hear that your custom home project has collapsed and I hope you get to move ahead in another positive direction. I appreciate your desire to thank the GC for his time and effort. Sometimes the true measure of a person is not what happens when all goes well, but what happens when it doesn't. All the best, Liz

tooskinneejs - This project was not put out to competitive bid. I had some specific things I wanted to incorporate with the house and a limited pool of local builders with experience in them. I researched builders and the homes they were building before they even spoke with me and I eventually picked the right builder for the job.

Considering the utter junk that gets built around here, there's no chance I would have simply gone with a low bidder. Of course, I did spot check the bids coming in from his subs. (It was going to be a cost plus contract.) They were very competitive and from well regarded companies and individuals.

I don't regret my choice of builder at all. Other regrets... sure, got some of them!

So, yes, the understanding was that he was getting the job. However, he's known what my parameters for completing the job were from the beginning, and we didn't find a way to meet them. He walked the lot with me before I bought it, waited until I sold my other house (a year), worked with me through the design phase(s), 3 set of plans and 4 bids (another year). No one else is getting the project, it's just dead.

Liz, thank you for your kind words. Hopefully your project goes much smoother than mine!

A gift certificate to a restaurant or tool company would be an appreciated gesture, I'm sure, along with a nice letter and an offer of a good reference.

Just an update. I spoke with the GC on the phone today and it went very well. I had already sent him an email letting him know the project wasn't going to happen and offered to pay him for his time. It was an very amicable conversation with no finger pointing. We discussed where the project derailed and what we could have done better.

If course, he politely assured me that I didn't need to pay him anything. Then he mentioned that he started a new service about a year ago that offered design advice and project pricing for a flat fee of $1200, but it didn't apply to me since we had no such agreement. I told him that sounded entirely reasonable and I would be happy to pay him $1200.

Oh... and his son might want to buy my lot. LOL.

So other than the check, I do plan to write him a nice letter with it and perhaps include a gift certificate. He definitely gets a good reference from me. Since I have two friends actively looking for a builder with the same credentials, I may end up sending business his way as well.

When I think of how badly this could have turned out, either with a bitter "divorce" or worse yet, an unscrupulous builder like the horror stories told so often on this forum, I am very happy with my choice of GC. Professionalism isn't always easy to find in the building industry.

And who knows, I may build a house some other year.

I told him that sounded entirely reasonable and I would be happy to pay him $1200.

Wow! Can I come and not build a house for you too?

(I try to limit a first meeting to one hour. And I should probably speak Southern slow to limit the amount of free advice.)

What a lovely outcome Alabamanicole --
And I think you're going to get your money's worth of good karma from that $1,200.

When people have treated us well, it's important for us to be able to feel like we have treated them well also. There have been several occasions where I've paid trades people more than they billed for because they did top-quality work and some of my other bids had been higher. I've never regretted it --

Worthy, you sound jealous... but he earned it. Hey, he put up with a single female OCD client for 2 years and never batted an eyelash! :)

Thanks, sweeby. Sometimes "thank you" is enough, but this time it just didn't feel right. I just tried to think about how I'd want to been treat if our positions were reversed.

I'd dearly love to get back some of the money I gave the (%^$#*!) house designer, though!

alabamanicole, I can relate to the feeling with the res. designer. Mine way overbilled at the very end (said it would cost $1,000 to finish, we gave him 1,000 and he then sent a bill for 6,000 after about 2 meetings. Now I have the final plan and when going through it with the builder, you won't believe the number of things I'm finding that he never incorporated. One whole room (which my Int. Des. sketched, and delivered to him TWICE--but he didn't include) and a wall of windows that he's had wrong from the very beginning....which was several years ago. I've told him in every meeting that it needed to change, I couldn't believe it's still there (wrong).

We'll prob. be battling him in court over this bill. We offered him an add'l $1,000 to settle it, and he refused. (!) My builder, engineer, and Int. Designer have all said I could have done this project without him.

The truth is, my Int. Designer came up with all the solutions for the layout of the house. The RD would work on it for months and not come up with a working solution; ID would take it and fix immed. I started just having her design each room, then have RD draw it.

She is definitely who I would start with next time. She was way faster, too (so less expensive). (They both bill about $100/hr.)

I'm sure this is not always the case, just happened to be for me....