I worked as one of the admin staff for a local, very well respected CFP. He is 'semi-retired', and has a client base of about 130 clients, many of whom have been with him for two and three generations now. The CFP firm we now use for my MIL's assets, was founded 20 yrs ago by a CFP he trained. With the crackdown by the SEC on the brokerages shading into 'Financial Planning' - which technically can only be done by four categories of Registered Investment Advisors (CFPs, CFAs, CPAs with PFS certification, CLU for insurance purposes only), more of them are encouraging their brokers to obtain CFP certification. It is not, as Donhoff points out, a cure-all for 100% reliability/honesty/knowledge. It is, however, at least a first step in winnowing out those who can't be bothered to study for an RIA designation and aren't willing to expend the additional requirement of annual classes to maintain that RIA status. Once you pass the CFP exam - pass rates fluctuate every year but are usually in the 40-60% pass ratio - you do a 3-yr internship before you are actually allowed to use the CFP title. If you have been working in financial services you can apply to have your past work experience counted towards your internship requirement. It took my boss 25 yrs in business before he could 'fire' the 80% of his clients that weren't worth working with. It is very true, when you are in this type of business, that when you factor in your time, 80% of your profits come from just 20% of your clients. The remaining 80% are more trouble than their accounts are worth. When he did take this drastic step, there were about half a dozen clients who were put on 'probation'. They were told they had to treat his office staff with courtesy from now on, or they too would have to leave. He made sure that anyone he 'cut' was given a referral to at least two other CFPs who were willing to accept new clients. The morale of the office staff rose considerably after this drastic purge, and although his business revenues declined by about 15% that year, the time saved by not dealing with recalcitant clients freed him to go after clients who proved more profitable and a better psychological 'match,' which is always an optimal goal in a service business like financial services. He never did 'hard' advertising; almost all his new clients came from personal referrals. The other independent CFPs envied him for being able to limit his client base. Most of them could not afford to do this, and had a much lower asset minimum for accepting new clients. IOW, it's like any other job where you can work for a large company (e.g., brokerage or other FS firm) and be a cog, or you can try to break out on your own, where you struggle with the difficulties of being a small business owner and wearing 'all the hats' as you try to market your business. It's a hard road, no doubt about it. Brokers who work towards earning their CFP designations are usually day-to-day doing portfolio allocations and stock/fund research. A lot of people think they want to do financial planning, but when they are forced to do the constant ROI number-crunching and endless market analyses, quarter after quarter (those YE deadlines for summary reports are REALLY stressful), find they don't enjoy it all that much, after all. The biggest difficulty in this business is not only are there many niches to the FS industry, but also, the people who need it the most are the least able to afford it. It's like being an independent mechanic: it takes you the same amount of time to service a $20K Chevy Malibu as it does to service a $150K Mercedes. But you can charge a lot more for the Mercedes than for the Chevy, so your return on time expended is more profitable. This means you not only need to be good at crunching numbers, you need good people skills to help grow your asset management portfolio. Being good at two very different skills is not easy for most people.

Yes, the market is indeed pretty hot. Bad timing. I wanted to be the GC for the project but my husband wisely vetoed it since this is our first time. The current arrangement does feel like a strange hybrid of owner-builder + a fixed fee project manager that is a GC who by contract provides warranty, liability insurance, and technical decision making. He's in charge of full supervision and communications with all subs; but I'm not paying him as an employee by time so he has control over how much time and how he does it (though we did ask for a minimum four days of visit a week in the contract without stipulating how much time spent each visit), and he's not guaranteeing a lump sum though he is supposed to guarantee quality and standards as per our contract. The numbers look like we're splitting the differences in cost between owner-building and full GC.

It would probably depend on where you live also, and may depend on if they supply the products or if you do. I have had some cleaners charge $40 an hour and do an ok job and others charge $20 and do a fantastic job in half the time. You could try a groupon to check out a few different companies and see how they do and they would also be able to give you a better estimate of the fee for ongoing service after they have cleaned your home. Also easier to just not call them back if they don't do a very good job. I would never consider an individual person for liability reasons.

Okay, so today after reading the posts in this thread about interest rates, I called another bank we have a few mortgages with (rentals) to inquire. They said they offer a 30 yr fixed on a construction to mortgage loan at 4.0%. We called our bank we have been working with to this point and put the brakes on things until we talk to the second bank tomorrow. That sounds much more appealing. Will slow us down a little to change banks at this point, but the savings if this works out will be significant in the long run. I agree that is would seem ARMs are only going up in the next 20 years. I am usually such a researcher, but I embarrassingly didn't research much beyond what our local bank told us about rates. Thanks for all the advice and info!! To be continued......