A lot of gray hair and stress is involved. lol

What do you want to know? We are acting as owner/builder which is basically the same thing but with more involvement.

As a GC you will be responsible for everything; budget, lining up subs, supervising subs, permits, inspections, working with engineers and architects, securing your loan, getting various agencies lined up and signed off on your project, and so on.

Nothing about it is terribly difficult, but if you are unfamiliar with how things work it can be a headache.

Also, do not think the business of building works like the rest of the professional world. Be prepared for missed deadlines and a lack of attention by some. It seems that in home building it is common place and almost acceptable. I know if some of the folks that have dropped the ball on my project were in the normal workforce, they would be unemployed.

My BIL is acting as GC on his $2 MIL house in Del Mar. It has had his ups and downs, like his custom window company going bankrupt and losing $50K on that deal. It happens. He has done it before though, but has run into many of the same kind of things I have been running into (for me it has been mostly engineers who are lacking in supply in CA).

Some say subs will screw you. I have found by shopping around and letting subs know I am O/B that there are some subs that are very willing to work with me and be extremely helpful. Others not so much. SHOP AROUND FOR SUBS!

michael

Thanks Michael. I am actually from the Del Mar area and now live near Seattle. Miss the beach, but not the price of homes!!

Ok, so acting as the GC, I would have window people come in, cabinet, electrical, etc instead of having the builder do it? Is there a huge cost savings that is worth it to do it this way?

Yes, lining up and scheduling subs is one of the things you will need to do. You will also be responsible for making sure the subs do the job correctly and it will be your responsibility if things go wrong. There is a lot more than just working with the subs though. Building a house is a big time project with a ton of stuff going on.

Can you save a lot of money? Sure you can, you can also lose money through errors, longer build times, and higher priced subs. A GC is basically a manager. Like everything in life a well managed project goes smooth and has the least likely hood for problems and cost overruns. A poorly managed project can be the hell!

I am acting as OB so I will have very few subs and I am doing most of the work with the help of family and friends. I hope to finish my house for around $110 per sq/ft. Most custom homes around here get built for around $200-$450 sqft. I have gotten bids on my house plan for around the $250 sqft mark. I would say I am saving some money. Of course, there are nights like last night where I could not sleep and felt like pulling my hair out and finding the bottom of a bottle, and I have yet to break ground. I find the bureaucracy in getting started very stressful (especially the fire chief and my engineer in my case)!

Excellent advise from mikeyvon.Your state is similar to ca. in requirements.You will still need the frank betz plans engineered for your area.If i had to do it all over again, my first trip would have been down to the building dept to get familiar with the process and steps that they require concerning permiting,plan requirements, order of inspections,etc. Get familiar with all the locals involved and the steps in which your build will happen. You dont want to schedule a sub ahead of another if that part of the build needs to be completed before they come in.Scheduling subs ahead of time and in order will help cut down on delays.Expect delays from ma nature,subs that have been held up on other projects,supplier misdealings,etc.

We're handling our build a little differently. Yes we are the GC but we hired a building mgr who is a builder/gc but we are not paying him in that capacity. He and his company were used for the concrete/block/frame. He is very well known and reputable in this area and has been in the business for 20+ years. However, we pulled our own permits. We are using ALL of our money. We are able to get his pricing on sub-work. He gets us a bid or two and we get our own and we decide which to use. We've gone with ours a few times and his a few times but never any pressure. We are sent invoices and send checks out to all the suppliers. That way I am in control and make sure everyone is paid so that all notice to owners are cleared.

Initially we were going to not use a mgr and DH swore he could handle it. There is NO WAY we could have ever done this alone. It requires being on the job site often, answering questions for subs (of which we probably wouldn't have known the answers). Our mgr is on the job site (when work is happening) twice daily and kept us in the loop on everything.

On the downside, we did have a few issues with him along the way so it's important to stay on top of everything and COMMUNICATE!

We just passed frame inspection yesterday and can't wait to move on to the next job.

Oh, and the very first thing we did was find a reputable architect to design our home. We found a plan on line that DH and I both liked and took it to our architect. In the end, our home is nothing like the original but it gave us a starting point and now our home will be like no one else's.

Good Luck with your decision!

A last note - yeah, I have more gray hair over this build! DD picks out about 20 each night. That's depressing!

Please do not take this the wrong way, but if you have to ask questions like "I would have window people come in, cabinet, electrical, etc instead of having the builder do it?", you need to do A LOT of homework.

This forum is a good place to come back to once you have done some homework. Read some books first! Do you even understand what is involved in building a house (because from some of your posts, it sounds as if you don't), regardless of who is the GC? Start there. There are other threads on this forum that address different books that are helpful for Owner/Builders and building houses.

This is a huge undertaking. I appreciate the fact that you are asking questions, but they are too general. Asking how you can serve as your own GC is not a question that will garner you anything except pieces of information that are useless on their own...

I know nothing about this book, but maybe it contains some useful information...

Here is a link that might be useful: Owner Builder Book

This is just my 2 cents, but in my opinion the only way you can be an owner/builder with no experience at all is if you are the type of person who is very organized, detail oriented and researches everything. The fact that you even posted your original post shows that you are not that type of person. I'm not trying to be mean, but if you don't know what you are doing you might as well light a match to a pile of money. If you don't even have a clue about the residential construction life cyle then you probably shouldn't be an owner/builder.

When you are the GC you do EVERYTHING except the physical labor, and you might do some of that (such as when all the subs claim it is someone else's job, it becomes your job). Permitting, budgeting, contracts, writing up specs, RFPs, hiring subs, coming up with a timeline so you can give the subs their expected start date, supervising, insurance, general inspecting (e.g., verifying that the studs are indeed KD, that the walls are in the correct places, etc.), on and on. You do ALL the work the GC would do. And you do it without the benefit of experience or contacts in the industry.

Do you have a job? An understanding boss? Because this will become your job.

Thanks for all your input. The reason I posted is because I wanted to hear what everyone is experiencing by doing it themselves. I work on the other end of home building and am an Interior Designer. The reason I asked about doing Windows and Cabinets ourselves is our friend owns his own is in Window sales and Installation, another in Roofing and we just got through remodeling our kitchen a couple months ago and was curious to know when you use the Builder as your GC are you stuck with using their Subs or can you use your own for specific things.

I might not seem organized in the way the questions were asked because this is not a process we have gone through yet. However, I am probably borderline OCD with organization, LOL.

Owner-Building was a very attractive concept for me, but I honestly considered it for about 2 days, and completely gave up on the idea. I have a 'part-time' 40-50 hr/week job, and the extra free hours are spent reading sites like this one and the ownerbuilderbook forums, learning as much as I can.

I think for most people not in the building industries, the most we can hope for is to be able to identify a GOOD contractor vs a poor one. I'm hoping that we can at least get good value for our money, by getting half a clue as to how a window SHOULD be put in, or how roof flashing SHOULD be done. This is what alot of ppl in our area are paying a premium for...you don't have to 'think' with a high end contractor, because they do all this for you, but that's why you pay the 15-18% premium. If I can find a middle-of-the-road contractor, but be out there watching, then I might save, yet get what I want for higher-end details. Anyway, that's my take on the whole thing. Good luck!

I worked as an Interior Designer in a past life - BC, 'before children' :)... So I know where you are coming from. In your initial post you posed your question in a very general and broad way which: 1. makes it difficult to answer and 2. indicated to some that you might be ill prepared to take on this challenge. Perhaps you were just trying to find out the different ways owner/builders were working on their projects?
If you are seriously considering being your own GC then there are resources available to you on the internet and at the library. As dixiedoodle mentioned, The Owner Builder Book is one, it is great. There is a website as well. www.ownerbuilderbook.com I took a class at a community college and the website for the teacher is www.ownerbuilder.com. Tons of good information -that is how I found this site. :) We have decided to hire a builder but I think all of my research will still be an asset in our build.
To answer your question about whether you can choose some of your own subs - it will depend on the Builder and your contract. If that is important to you then you should stipulate that and find someone willing to work with you on that basis. An option that might work for you is to find a GC/Builder that will get you through drywall and then you can GC the finish work yourself since you have contacts in the industry.
Hope that helps.

Custom before you turn any dirt be sure to take your plans to an estimating service that can tell you the cost of all the materials to be used in your home.You can get bids from two or more subs on just about anything. Just put all the info in a simple Excel and you will have a general idea of what you are going to spend.After all this is a whole lot of money that you are going to spend.Get these sub bids in writing also.

Thanks everyone!

Have lots of antacids on hand!!

We finished our house in the Seattle area 15 months ago using a plan from the Bungalow Company out of Bend, OR. We had it engineered locally to meet the code requirements for this area. From the time we submitted our plans for our permit to the time we finished our house it took us 15 months. During that time I was putting in about 40 hours a week planning, budgeting, scheduling, and doing some really crummy jobs that I couldn't find anyone else to do. Everything went very well, because I nitpicked over every detail ahead of time, but it was still a huge amount of work.

My advice would be to get a few books on how to contract your own home as well as a current budgeting book (Means Guide to Residential Construction). You need to have books on the actual construction process, so you know a truss from a joist. You also need to understand how many different elements go into building and how much each of those elements will cost. Search out decent subcontractors and respect the fact that you have to pay a reasonable amount of money for quality labor.

If everything goes well you can build your home for less than a builder would cost, but many things will go wrong while building. Mistakes, changes, and time all cost money. The only way to avoid the worst of these is to try and map out the whole process ahead of time.

I think this depends on what the economy is like in the area you live in. I live in the South on the coast, and it would be impossible for me to get a sub to do anything. They are loyal to their GC's, and they do not have time to waste on odd jobs. Both the electrical contracting company and the tile company only work 4 days a week, for example. This is a small town, but my GC currently has 11 homes either under construction or waiting for him to get to them; none are spec homes. I closed in May of 06 and it was Jan 07 before he got to me to start construction. Another thing to consider is that the subs are more cooperative w/a big GC because they know he will guarantee them more business for years to come. Plus, I do not know much about structural issues, so I would not catch shortcuts. I know my GC is a perfectionist. I intend to stay in this house for 20 years. You get what you pay for, and you can always do an addition later if you need to cut costs now. I opted for a small house (2000 square feet) but I know it was done right because of my builder's reputation.

It's a full time job and then some. I would be very well off now if I were getting paid what I have put into it!
Lots of errands, phone calls, sleepless nights, extreme lows and extreme highs.
We are spending the same as we would have if we'd gotten a GC, but we're putting nicer finishes and details in than we would have had with a GC since we are not paying for one's fees. And we like feeling more in control of our house, even if it has been extremely stressful. But that's just how we feel.

Is a GC and the builder the same ? At times it seems people are using the term in the same meaning but at times it gives me impression that a GC is an employee of a builder, something like a project manager for a specific house.

Jgirl, how did yo find your builder=GC and why he took the job in the capacity he did instead of being THE BUILDER with I suppose higher premium ?