For me, I wish I had seen my allowance sheet ahead of time so I could go and price the things most important to me and realized what I was getting into as far as extras. I was under the impression that my budget would be a pretty generous one based on my home price and its been very disappointing.

I would also discuss how you pay for overages- will he bill you at the time of the order? At the end of every month?

As you can see we are dealing with a lot of allowance issues and that is where my mind is at!

Great advice. Thank you both! And thank you for the article Charles

To me there's only one important question...Why isn't all this in the contract?

Discussing stuff over coffee with the project ahead of you when everything is blue birds and sugar plums is way different when you're all (you and the contractor) are stressed out and sick and tired of the whole deal. Then you and the contractor will both wish all that was discussed was in the contract because memory starts to get real selective.

This is the list of questions I compiled. I didn't always use them all, but it gave me a starting point for questions:

1. How many years have you been in
   business? How many homes have you built?

1. What percent of your business
   is residential v commercial? Where
   is most of your work located?

1. What types of projects do you
   prefer to work on?

1. How is your office
   structured?

1. Who would be at my house every
   day? Construction supervisors? Who would we be working with? How long have they been with you? Who
   would we be communicating with?

1. How much of the work would you
   sub out? Do you have teams of subs
   you regularly work with? How do you
   maintain quality with subs?

7. How many projects do

you manage at once?

1. How do you compare yourself to
   other builders? What are the most important benefits of the homes you
   build?

1. What are the major
   energy-saving features of homes you build?

1. What standard features do your
   homes include? What options and upgrades can I select? Preferred vendors? What if I find something on my own?

1. How and when will the final
   price for my home be determined?

1. How often (and when) will I
   have access to the home during the building process?

1. How long will my home take to
   complete?

What's your process for
inspection at key points of construction, at final walk-through, and to
address any matters that need to be corrected or finalized?

15. Experience with aging in place projects?

16. What are some of the largest obstacles on a
project like this?

17. How do you charge, and what are your fees? Any
caps on costs?

18. Do you have preferred lenders?

19. How do you make sure we stay within our
budget?

20. How do you manage timelines?

21. What type of warranty do you offer?

22. Are there any red flags with what I want to
do?

I always use a flip-it-around question: What are the characteristics of a good customer? (with realtors it's "good seller", with contractors it's "good homeowner", with employees it's "good boss")

Their responses actually enlighten me as to how they like to work and allow me to judge compatibility.

I also like situational questions: "Tell me about a time you had X problem. What were the issues and how did you resolve them?" A GC that claims to have never run into budget problems, a realtor who claims to have never had a difficult seller, or people that only speak hypothetically, those are red flags because those aren't honest answers. And I want to see their problem solving abilities and creativity in action to verify that they possess these skills.

How about the guarantee of their jobs after completed ?

I will bookmark this page.

You also need to see what your builder is building and what your builder has built in the past. You need to talk to the owners of homes your builder has built -- at least from a few years ago. At this point those owners owe him nothing. What worked, and what things the owners decided they didn't need, so that the builder wasn't responsible for. And what he did that didn't work -- separating that from what he did that they requested, of course. Talk directly. If he hems and haws... most likely you need to duck elsewhere. Mine hasn't done solar, but he's upfront about it. Okay, I'm cool with the rest of this one's bona-fides. At any rate, keep records of EVERYTHING. I'm thinking my builder contractor is reliable because past data says so... but BUT record everything anyway.

I got a ton of information from past clients. I asked those on the list for names of others they knew who had built with the same builder. I was looking for the ones that were NOT on the referral list, who were more likely to have issues I wanted to know about upfront. I ended up with outstanding recommendations and went with that builder, but I learned about specific issues to manage better. For instance, past failures with a cabinet line and questions about that vendor.