I guess I qualify as an OB now although I didn't start out that way. We wound up firing our contractor halfway through the job due to his massive incompetence and dishonesty. It then took us several months to convince our bank to let us finish the job ourselves rather than risking getting involved with another crooked builder. Being a general contractor is far more about project management than it is about construction. The GC lines up sub-contractors, makes sure they show up and do the work they're supposed to, handles paperwork, and makes sure everybody gets paid when they're suppoesed to be paid. Many GCs probably couldn't hammer a nail in straight if they had to. To be a GC you need business skills and project management skills, and you need to know (or be willing to find out) what a construction job should look like when it is finished. It helps in dealing with subs to learn the lingo but you don't have to be able to hammer, saw, hang sheetrock, run electrical lines, or anything else. If you OB, plan to spend at least 20 hours per week and possibly more than that on the job. I just WISH we had just gone the owner-builder route right from the start. Neither DH nor I have any construction experience whatsoever but we had looked into being our own general contractors before we hired our builder. We even took a class on building your own home but then decided that we just didn't have the necessary time to devote to the task. Was that a mistake! I had done my homework and had spent a huge amount of time on this board before we ever broke ground - so I had a good idea of what to look for in quality work. It quickly became evident that my builder didn't have a clue and apparently he couldn't have cared less. His subs were obviously the cheapest he could find and often, I suspect, were undocumented day laborers. They didn't follow installation specifications for installed materials like Tyvek sheathing, my Jeld-wen windows, or the roofing shingles. I know because when things didn't look right to me, I got the specs from the manufacturers and checked their work myself. They also often didn't follow building codes - which I found out because I had put it in my contract that I would separately hire a third-party inspector to inspect all stages and that any work not meeting code would have to be redone at the builder's expense. The framer hired by my builder used I-beam trusses between the first and second floors instead of the open-web trusses I had specified. The framing was completed while I was out of town for two weeks and by the time I got back, the house was already sheathed and the roofer had started work. So it was too late (eg., economically unfeasible) to make the builder have the entire roof and second floor taken down so that the right trusses could be put in. My plans called for the HVAC units and all ductwork to be within the heated/cooled envelope of the house. When I demanded that my builder check with his engineer to ensure that holes could be cut through the i-beams large enough to accomodate the HVAC ducts, he assured me that would be "no problem." That was a lie. Even the holes that had to be cut through the i-beam trusses for plumbing drain lines weakened them enough that my third-party inspector insisted that extra trusses be installed to bear part of the load. No doubt putting those in was a major expense that the builder had to eat. There was no way HVAC ductwork could be run between the floors as designed. Instead, the HVAC units were put in the unairconditioned attic along with massive amounts of flexible ductwork. Instead of an attic that could someday be finished out to add a couple more bedrooms, I have two big HVAC units and what looks like a massive silver spiderweb totally filling the attic space. I also lost closet space in all my bedroom closets because ductwork chases down to the first floor had to be put somewhere. When I exploded about the lost usable square footage and the additional on-going costs associated with having the HVAC and ductwork up in the attic (we live in central Texas!) my builder tried to tell me that EVEN IF the framer had used open-web trusses, the ductwork still would not have been able to be run through the trusses and that "everybody puts HVAC units in the attic." DUH? Open web trusses are designed to allow ductwork and plumbing to be run them!! Had the man NEVER read anything about energy efficient building practices? Nope. He just trusted that his framer - who hardly spoke English - knew what he was doing. Despite all this, my builder kept telling me that he was a "professional" and that I should just relax and let him do his job. HAH! I can't think of a single task that ever he actually handled completely correctly from start to finish. Then, shortly after the HVAC units were installed, I got hit with a $54,000 lien because builder had not paid for my windows and patio doors even though he had been given draw money specifically for that purpose! That lien was immediately followed up by threats of two smaller liens from two other subcontractors (the portapotty provider and the exterior paint contractor)! And the builder admitted he didn't have the money to pay any of the three. At that point I was more than ready to fire him but my bank insisted that I could NOT do so. We paid off the liens and the unpaid subcontractors and I took over handling ALL monies and paying the subcontractors and suppliers directly instead of having draws go to the builder to pay them. No more money was going to flow into the builder's hands until my house was completed, at which point anything that was still left of the original contract price would be his "profit." By that point, the only thing the builder was doing was hiring subs and ordering materials. I was paying a third party inspector separately to check all work that I didn't feel competant to inspect myself. I was handling all the paperwork and making sure everybody got paid. But then the kicker... I discovered that builder was having materials delivered to my build - which I was paying for - and then having his subs (whom I was also paying!) move them to a spec house that he was building and install them there. I had had enough. I fired him. After taking over as GC, I had to spend as much time/effort on UNDOING some of the mistakes he made as on moving forward to finish the build. And the money he wasted/stole from us has forced us to cut back on the level of finishes that we had originally planned to have. My advice: Go take a course on building your own home. Spend time reading and learning everything you can about the building process. Learn the language. If you are reasonably intelligent and willing to devote the time, you CAN build your own home. Plus, there are businesses (Owner-Builder Network and UBuildIt.com are two that I know about although I've not used either one) that will help you by providing you with pre-vetted lists of sub-contractors and guiding you step by step through the process. If your state or your bank requires you to have a licensed builder, these organizations will be the builder-of-record for you. Of course they charge a fee for their services. I don't know how much but it is significantly less than a builder's profit margin. You can also hire a third-party inspector to make sure that you're getting everything built to code. Just make sure that all your subcontractors know that they don't get paid until your third party inspector signs off that the work is up to code. I designed my plan myself and I would love to see the house built as designed. The house we are in the process of finishing will eventually be "okay" but it will never be the house I dreamed of. So there is some chance that when we get this house built we will sell it and rebuild the same design in a new location. But next time I will definitely OB from the get go.

We just started the process with a local credit union. I'm in Louisiana though, and it is very common in my area for people to act as OB. We haven't had to provide anything special. They did want us to have a bid for turnkey construction from a GC to turn in along with all of the individual bids we obtained ourselves for each part of the project. Have you checked with local banks/credit unions and not just big banks?

I would ask your subs if they charged you any sales tax on the materials they used in your home and if so if you could have that documented on your receipt from them. You need a receipt or invoice that shows what sales tax you are deducting in case you are ever audited. Even the numbers that I backed into on my example I gave above, I went to Lowes and Home Depot afterwards and had them pull up my receipts (one advantage to using a credit card) and print them off so that I would have them for backup in case the IRS ever came looking. States vary greatly on how they determine when sales tax is collected. Does Texas charge sales tax on the sale of a newly constructed home? If so, the builder would be exempt from paying sales tax on material that was used in the building of the home. Therefor your subs may not have charged you any and that is why it is not on their invoice. However, like I said, sales tax law varies greatly from state to state and I wouldn't want to give you advice there as I'm not a Texan. Maybe someone else here knows or you could research it on the internet or ask a local accountant. As far as the cost basis goes, any sales tax you deduct and any energy credits you take will reduce your cost basis. The $250,000/$500,000 exclusion only applies if you have lived in your home more than 2 years. If you sell before then and have a profit you will need to know your cost basis and pay tax on the gain. And after the two years are up if you are lucky enough to have that kind of a gain you will also need to be able to figure your cost basis. So in short just keep good records of all your costs and any tax deductions & credits that you do end up taking. I would still take the sales tax deduction as it is guaranteed benefit to you this year whereas the other is hypothetical and unpredictable and a dollar saved today is always worth more than a dollar saved in the future. The IRS allows a standard deduction for sales tax if you do not have your receipts for all normal daily purchases. Sales tax on construction costs are deductible above and beyond that standard deduction so it can amount to quite a bit. I'd say just ask your subs and see what they can come up with. They may not have charged you any sales tax. If they charged you tax they are responsible for reporting and paying that to the state so they would have records. If they paid sales tax on materials and didn't charge you any sales tax then you are probably out of luck. In theory, sales tax is typically charged to the end user but that isn't how it always works out. And some states charge sales tax on the sale of a home and others do not so if varies on who is considered the end user. Sorry for the long winded explanation. Hope it make sense.

I built a huge koi pond at the house across the street. Rumour has it that house came in around $40mil. That guy is going to look like the poor cousin now, I guess. These guys tend to be #3's, referring to my earlier post. The money can be good but as Racket suggested, they expect a disproportionate amount of your time (meaning my time as the company face) when you have 15 or 20 other jobs going on. The value of our dollar may be nearly the same, but even with the strength of our dollar material and equipment prices haven't fallen much so I guess a pool here costs even more that a couple of years ago.