Hang in there! We are DIY building our new home and the only things that are more than we planned on were: foundation (because we added rebar to the whole foundation) and HVAC (we went with bigger unit) We have saved on so many others and have done a lot of the work (electrical, insulation, painting) ourselves and that has helped make up for the overages. Good luck!

sweetwillie,

We have experienced some of the same; we are trying to do some of the smaller jobs ourselves. For instance, we will be having a pine 'ceiling' on our front and back porches. Dh and myself will be doing the staining of all the boards since the charge for labor to pay someone else is $1000.00!! Our sons are going to help with the exterior painting next spring....our contractor is fine with it too! Good Luck!

Yes!! We are three quarters of the way through our build and not one thing has stayed within budget. We've just had things like our original cement guy that did our basement we weren't happy with so we went with someone different for the driveway and porch and that change alone was $1600 more because this sub was the next cheapest one. We too are doing a lot ourselves but I feel your pain. I am calling this week to downgrade my plumbing as well. We are very uneasy about the economy but are in the middle of our build and have no choice but to finish.
I hope all goes well with you and the rest of your subs come in lower!

I feel your pain! We are over too. Every draw, not by much, but it is adding up. Everything seems to have gone up except lumber, however I noticed that I am over on that too!! Shingles are up, Siding is up, Concrete is up. My estimate to build was done in May, then oil spiked in July that sent most oil based products up, however now that oil is down, I have not seen any prices drop. I had "the talk" with my builder about leaving things unfinished until we complete the main part of the house to see whats left over of the money. I figure I could second guess myself and say "well now was not the time" but in actuality I don't see things getting cheaper so I guess "now" is always the best time to build. I have to laugh, My grandparents paid $7,000 for their first house, my mom and dad paid $27,000 for theirs, my older sister paid 120,000 to build hers 17 years ago. Mine will be over $300,000 before its done and it's just slightly above the average new home in my area. If I had waited-I think mentally I would have gone nuts living in our current smaller home. So I am willing to bite the bullet in order to move. I have to just keep everything tighter here on out until completion of the home.

We've certainly had our ups and downs on the budget, but what really helped was being our own GC and completely ignoring the suggested allowances for fixtures and finishing materials. We've got a 4,000 sq ft house, and the lighting allowances from most builders was $3-5K. Ha, that will barely buy pull chain light bulb bases.

Because we set our budget high for those things, we've managed to come in under budget on fixtures and some other items while insulation (spray foam), framing (small amount over), electrical (every extra circuit and outlet is $$) and cabinets have been over.

And the thing I love about builders is that they add insult to injury, not only do they snow you with the low allowances, but then hit you with a percentage or fee when you go over the absurdly low allowances.

At least your builders are still solvent, a lot down here in Charlotte are going belly up and dragging their clients down into hell with them. About half the ones we interviewed to be our GC are bankrupt now, we dodged some serious bullets.

An "allowance" is a small "cost-plus" contract inside a "fixed-price" contract and therefore you give up price control of some of the most expensive elements of the design. Even the GC has little cost control over a sub he has already hired.

I have found that most contractor generated "allowances" are about half what they should be because the contractors naturally want to keep the project attractive to the owner and to get the job.

To avoid these problems I only use a few allowances and I set them myself. Also, they are for materials only (if labor is not able to be priced, a unit price is required) The owners also have the option to provide the allowance materials themselves for a full credit in case the builder tries to force a "sweetheart deal" with their favorite suppliers or a sub simply marks up the materials excessively. This is not cost control equal to competitive bidding but it is better than nothing.

This problem occurs frequently in home construction and home improvement because, unlike commercial construction, the involvement of a design professional is not required and when a GC writes a contract he has no compelling reason put a homeowner's interests above his. "Don't worry about the finishes, we can just put in an allowance and figure it out later". In a commercial contract this would only be done on a "fast-track" project where time was more important than cost but even then each subsequent design package would be bid to three or more subs and the owner would select the winner and the contract amount would be adjusted up or down.

If you are wealthy and you trust your contractor, negotiate a "cost of the work with a fee" contract. If you are not wealthy, use a competitive bid "fixed-price" contract and include everything. Don't try to mix the two.

I feel your pain. We have to go back for more money this week. We are 3/4 done also. We started in Feb but due to endless rain didn't start actual construction until May and pretty much everything has gone up since then. Concrete, shingles, plumbing materials, even drywall and mud. Also just found out the septic will be twice what we thought it would be. Despite doing some things ourselves and really getting some great bargains for lighting and other finish materials, we are still 10% over what was our original top out.

Fortunately we can afford the higher amount, we just really didn't want to have to!

I should never have gotten my hopes up when 2 months ago we were $25,000 under budget - not anymore!! Building an Energy Star home costs a lot of money up front. We are fortunate with a builder that works hard to get a good price for everything, but our tastes are definitely 'champaign on a Bud Light budget'!!!!!

I'm trying my best to find bargains and using everyone I know to try to get a deal. We saved several thousands of dollars by getting all plumbing fixtures from a friend in the business, and my DH works in the HVAC business so we've saved some there as well. I'm gonna have my mom (an artist) do some decorative painting for the kids' rooms.

Hang in there everybody!

Another $5700 over on electrical. Its getting laughable.

Do you have alot of allowances in your contract? If so, anything that has an allowance will most likely go over. We were given a $8000 allowance on our septic. Just got a bill for $5,000. Our well was $4,500 allowance for 200 ft but went over 75ft.,just got a bill for $750.00. Those were the only 2 items that we agreed to apply allowances to.Try to avoid the word ALLOWANCE.

We agreed to allowances for plumbing fixtures, lighting fixtures, hardwood floors, and tile floors but only because while I had already done a LOT of looking and had a good idea about prices, I had not yet settled on exactly what I wanted.

Besides, my experience with remodeling our current home (which we did all the work on ourselves) was that, if we picked out an item - like a particular faucet - that we wanted but did not buy it right that minute, that particular model would no longer be available when we went back to purchase. Had big doubts that my builder would go right out and buy every single such item I specified the day we signed our contract and I didn't want to end up with things that didn't work together because the faucets I had picked were still available but the coordinating light fixtures for that room no longer were...and there no longer anything reasonably similar on the market.

I basically wanted to be able to wait to make my final choices until we were ready to purchase so that I could verify that all items that needed to coordinate were still available.

However, because I had done a lot of "window shopping" for these items ahead of time and had a fairly good idea of costs, I had my builder adjust the allowances before we signed the contract. I.e., he had originally put in only $2000 for lighting fixtures (including ceiling fans). Since we will have twelve ceiling fans and I knew the ones I wanted would run about $350 each, there was no way $2000 was going to cover them plus other light fixtures. I'm sure he priced the allowance out based on $39.95 "builder's basic" ceiling fans. LOL.

Also, I insisted that the contract specify that allowances were for the purchase of "materials only" and we added an addendum describing precisely what materials were included and what materials were NOT included in the allowance amount. That is, my plumbing fixture allowance includes ONLY the actual faucets, toilets, sinks, and bathtubs - none of the hoses and drain pipes they connect to nor, for example, the materials necessary to build the support that the tub sits in. Flooring allowance is for the wood only. Nails, underlayment, etc is not included. Tile allowance is for the tiles only. Mortar and grout are not included.

Finally, I insisted that I be allowed to purchase "allowance items" from where ever I wanted. I do not have to use any particular supplier. (Because of this, it seemed fair that shipping and handling for anything not purchased locally be included in the allowance.)

Thus far, by judicious shopping at online merchants and via craigslist, I have managed to stay under on my allowance on everything and actually upgrade some items from what I had originally expected to use. For example, while I was lusting after Blanco Silgranit sinks, I had about decided that I would have to settle for something less expensive. Then I found three brand new Blanco Silgranit sinks in the perfect sizes for my kitchen sink, bar sink, and TV room sink all on Craigslist - for less than half what the local supplier would have charged my builder for the exact same sinks. The seller was a builder going out of business who was getting rid of inventory.

There is no way I would ever have agreed to an allowance to cover any labor costs. Getting reasonable "labor cost" information is next to impossible if you're not a builder. Plus, with allowances where the owner pays for any overages, the builder has no incentive to shop for a bargain. We found that out when we decided we wanted to add some additional lighting mid way thru the build. Obviously this was a "change order" so I knew we were going to be footing the bill. Builder's electrician came out and gave us a bid for doing the extra work that seemed totally outrageous. (almost $4000!) Electrician claimed that he "wasn't making any money" even at that price but was just bidding the job to get some work to keep a couple of his workers busy for a couple of days. Builder's reaction was "well, that's what he charges and, since we used him for the rest of the work, if you have another electrician come out and tie into the work that has already been done, this guy won't warranty the electrical system."

The bid was broken down by task and I had had some electrical work done in my current home recently so, while I didn't know what a fair price on most of the tasks were, on a couple of them I knew that he was bidding more than we had paid to have the same task done where the electrician actually had to cut thru sheet rock and blindly fish wiring thru insulation, etc. Since we were still at the open wall stage, that simply did not seem right to me.

So, we priced out the materials necessary to do the job (at retail prices) and guesstimated at the labor costs based on electrician's "couple of workers for a couple of days" and the total came to less than half the bid amount. So we made counteroffer of $1800.

It was rejected outright so I got a bit p.o.ed and decided "well nevermind, we'll have him come out and do these two little bitty things (less than $100) that really HAVE to be done and we'll skip the rest of the changes until the house is complete." Funny thing... the electrician then contacted us to see if we would be open to him coming back out and reassessing the tasks to be done. And guess what, he decided he COULD do the entire job for the $1800 counter offer after all.

Bottom line is, if you're in a position where you don't have any negotiating strength and you're not willing to walk away (or can't walk away), you're going to get screwed. If you have allowances that cover materials and labor and you don't have any option but to use the workmen and suppliers your builder chooses, they are going to upbid everything and then tell you "gee, I can't believe how much prices have gone up."