Nervous about unusual contract terms with production builder
Jennifer Miyazaki
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
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Virgil Carter Fine Art
6 years agoDenita
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Vague Builder's Contract - Please Help.
Comments (37)Sorry about your loss. If you want to see the full version of the contract I outlined, you can buy a paper copy of AIA A105 at the link below for $8.00. There is nothing wrong with crossing out what you don't want and adding supplemental provisions or clarifications on attached sheets as long as they are dated and referenced in the main Agreement. Be sure all parties initial in the margin where changes were made and make three signed copies. All standard contract forms provide a space for an interest rate to be entered for late payments to the contractor and that should be sufficient for any builder. Adding 10% to the entire bill after 5 days is obviously an onerous penalty and since the builder doesn't get a discount on most of the cost of construction he can't truthfully say it is due to lost supplier discounts. Window suppliers generally require half at the order time and the rest upon delivery. A 10% penalty is a huge red flag and a deal breaker. Be thankful the guy showed his stripes early. All AIA contracts naturally provide for an architect but that can be modified. I hope you will have someone advising you during the construction phase since even good contractors make mistakes and it is not realistic to ask anyone to put your interests above theirs and building inspectors have no obligation to you to find errors in the work contrary to popular opinion. An Allowance is like a small Cost Plus contract inside a Fixed Price contract so avoid Allowances if at all possible and make the builder bid as much as possible up front. When you must use them, determine the quantity and general location of the items now (even if in narrative/list form) so the labor/installation price can be included in the base bid and the Allowance will only be for the cost of materials. Listing Unit Costs (like a per s.f. cost for flooring installation) can help too. This is the only time the builder will be motivated to keep the prices down so don't waste that advantage. The buy-out of an Allowance item should be resolved by Change Order whether it is higher or lower than the Allowance amount since it changes the contract price. I like to add a third option where a full credit is given and the Owner can supply the material. Sometimes this is the only way out of a difficult negotiation with a Sub. If he knows you can walk away he will try harder to please you. In my opinion a Fixed Price contract with lots of Allowances that include labor is the most lucrative contract type for a builder assuming he can get kick backs from his subs. I even had a contractor ask me for a kick back because he recommended me for the project. Good luck. Here is a link that might be useful: AIA A105...See MoreBuilders, pricing, contracts - what do you all think?
Comments (28)Mightyanvil, Thank you for the contract breakdowns, I really appreciate that. That is definately part of what I was looking for, ways to create a win/win for us and our eventual builder. We have someone we are interested in using but have not talked specific contracts yet. There seems to be some perception that 1. I am not interested in quality and 2. that I don't realize the potential costs of quality and the unforseen. I appreciate that you are trying to warn me -thanks. I do understand these things and am trying to be prepared for them. What I was trying to get at is that somewhere out there there is a good contractor who will look at a project and take into account our site, our materials choices, our plan, etc. and come up with a bid or projected budget and a price to build our home based on all those things plus whatever he/she needs to make it work, do the job and continue to run a business successfully. Fine with that. There is also someone out there who will do all the same things and will take opportunities to increase the profit he/she takes from the job without offering any additional quality or service to the owners. My whole point is that from my point of view the second scenario is not okay with me and I was wondering what others had done and how they felt about their experiences. I would like to guard against scenario #2 if I possibly can. I know if I choose more expensive materials I will also have to increase the labor portion because it will take more skill from the tradesperson required to do the job. We do want a well built home and know that we will have to make choices and potentially sacrifices to get the things that matter most to us. When I was projecting our budget I took the averages from about 5 different sources of information and then depending on my ability to verify how that would apply to the home we are building I would either use the highest number if I didn't know or the amount that seemed to fit best with our project. There were some items that I was able to verify by actually going out and getting real numbers others by saying 'we are building a home next year it will be (description)if I am looking for 'x' and I budget 'y' is that reasonable? In the 'unknown' areas I spoke to a friend who owns his own concrete flatwork company, he has built several of his own homes. One of his sites was in our neighborhood and similar to ours, so in my basic labor and materials budget I took the amount he paid for excavation and tripled it for safety. I compared that to the prices others have paid in 'hairy situations' and my number was always the highest. We have already dug some on the property as we put in the septic and the excavator at that time did not feel we would have a problem *from what he could see and had experienced on our site* digging the hole for the house. I took the highest foundation cost and added 50%. We have city water, septic is in and we have electrical ready to go. This home will replace a manufactured home so our permits are inexpensive-about 1/3 of what it would be otherwise. When I got my budget together I looked at the overall total and added 10% to the entire thing. I did find that some numbers varied more than others and were harder to pin down. Other times the same number kept popping up so I felt I must be close and the 10% on top of that should cover it. I actually showed this budget and the plan to the builder we are considering and she gave me the feedback that most of my numbers are 'conservative'- in her terms which meant 'high' and we should be fine. Even if our budget goes over another 10% from that we are ok -including the fee amounts she quoted us for her services. At the time the plan we had been considering was built as a spec house nearby and we had gone through it several times. When I contacted the builder I explained that we really liked his house and were considering building that home ourselves. We shared with him information about our property and our time frame and we talked about the finishes in the house and the different things he was including. When he gave me the price for the home as built but on our site it was about 16% higher than our highest number and it did not include everything. Based on comments some have made, maybe it was still a 'fair' number but then again maybe not...in our county you can look up valuations on permits and the price he quoted for house only was $100k over that amount and it was $200k over what he told the county his cost was. In talking with my concrete contractor friend who has built his own homes he told me that builders usually underestimate their expenses for the county but that the county gets very close and they include approximately a 10% 'contractor markup' in their valuation. Enter builder #3, nice guy, only builds turnkey, fixed price. Not sure why he was interested in us as we were very up front that we did not think we would go that way. He was trying to convince us why we should I think. He was very helpful and actually wanted to see our site. He has just finished carving half a hillside out for a huge custom home which we toured so he knows about 'hairy excavation' and he looked at our site and said it was about average for our area and he didn't see a problem. Famous last words I know... anyway he ballparked a price about 10% less than the higher guy and about 9% above our 'cost plus' budget. This makes sense as he does need that 'coverage' in there, but...we had already added that to our numbers so...either we are still way off or...make of it all what you will. The highest number is out of our budget, the middle number is doable and the low number means new furniture, nice landscape etc. Guess which one I am planning on? Guess which one I am HOPING for?! :) So perhaps some will say this all bears no relevance to an actual project and maybe it doesn't. I am not trying to control every aspect, just educate myself and be prepard so that hopefully we make a good choice when we do finally sign that contract. I just wanted to know what everyone else was thinking about builders, pricing and contracts and how to best go about building a home for a 'fair' price. We are committed to building a house, it will be interesting to see what it will actually cost. Thanks all....See MoreQuestion about language in interior designers contract for new home
Comments (15)Thanks, all for the insight. Based on past experience I don't have a problem with the markup - with past designers the items I've gotten have been below retail even with the markup, and when they weren't I purchased them independent from the designer. I'm not fond of paying the markup AND and hourly rate - I would expect one or the other to be lower when working on items for which the designers gets a markup (v. specing items for the builder to order). That said, we strongly prefer this design firm and are going ahead with them, as they bring tremendous value that others with whom we've chatted just can't provide (prime among them being excellent communication and follow through, and use of CAD in the design process both to help us visualize options and to ensure the desired end result is clear to installers). Mostly, the contract terms just make it such that we're unlikely to buy furniture or window coverings through the designer, but, honestly, we don't really want new furniture, and I can handle window coverings....See MoreBuilder trying to increase price after signing contract.
Comments (11)Here’s the catch. Materials costs have risen dramatically and increases are still happening. Even if the contract doesn’t have an escalations clause (it likely does), and the builder is compelled to construct the house at the original price, it is the customer that will end up paying in the end. An experienced builder knows the cost levers better than you do and the loss of margin from higher materials costs will be mostly made up for by reducing other costs like labor and materials quality. Unfortunately it’s becoming expensive to build now and it’s hard to keep quality at a high level without changing specs or compromising somewhere else....See Morecac546
6 years agoRaiKai
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6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoJennifer Miyazaki
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoJennifer Miyazaki
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6 years agoJeffrey R. Grenz, General Contractor
6 years agoJennifer Miyazaki
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