About 5 months from demolition to move in...

From groundbreaking to move in for our fully custom home: 11 1/2 months. It probably helped that our HOA would start charging penalties if the build took longer than a year.

"Bid" your house (meaning give you a quote based on the plans)? Or "build" your house?

BID = cost estimate

"Bid" = A hard fast number

"Cost estimate" = a guess

The time frame will also vary depending on the builder, sub-contractors, local economy, time of season, and the detail of the construction documents.

If your documents are fully detailed, in this busy build climate, you’re looking at a month or more to get pricing. If there’s too much information lacks n’t, and a lot of allowances, you’re still probably looking at 3 weeks or longer .

@Green Designs, if the plans and specifications are really fully detailed, clients may be waiting a very long time to get pricing back from builders (never is a time that falls into the category of long times.)

The more detailed plans and specifications are, the less attractive the project is to bidders. To paraphrase author and general contractor David Gerstel, bidders are essentially firms invited to compete for the right to increase what the client believes is a fixed contract price through change orders.

"...To paraphrase author and general contractor David Gerstel, bidders are essentially firms invited to compete for the right to increase what the client believes is a fixed contract price through change orders..."

And the more vague and incomplete are the construction drawings and specifications, the greater the opportunity for bidders to "interpret" and make allowances to the consumers detriment.

Regardless of the type of construction contract, the greater the detail and specificity of the contructions drawing and specifications, the less there is to interpret or argue about.

If there is a category of builder who don't want to spend time on complete drawings and specification, that's a favor to a consumer.

Please forgive me if I've conflated two points and for a lengthy follow up post.

First, the answer to the OP's question regarding how long it will take to get bids on their project is "it depends." It's a function of the builders' interest, builders' workload, trades' workload, the quality of the information provided by the plans and specifications, and whether the client and/or architect's expectation is that the time invested by everyone preparing the bid is "free" or the builders are being compensated for the time invested developing missing specifications (typically plumbing, HVAC, and electrical specs) and producing a bid (gasp!)

The more detailed the plans and specifications, the more "gotchas" can be contained therein. Despite a builder's best--and good faith-- efforts, such details can get missed with the consequence that a builder's bid may be lower than the true cost to construct the project. Ouch! Make that double ouch!

If the plans contain a bunch of "gotchas" and the expectation is a cost-free-to-the-client bidding service the plans are more likely to be put at the bottom of the builder's "in" box. In this case, it will take longer to get competitive bids. Indeed, some firms asked to bid on the project may simply never submit a bid or may submit a "no quote" on the bid deadline. Maybe a second round with different bidders....

Gerstel's point is a different one. He asserts that the competitive bidding process is inherently flawed. The notion that a "perfect" set of plans bid to multiple firms will produce the exact same quality end product and client experience but at a lower total cost has long been promoted by architects. Of course, developing that "perfect" set of plans generates additional billable hours for architects, but it's always solely in the client's best interest, right?

The reality is that the low bidder in a competitive bid process "wins" most often by including the lowest cost suppliers and lowest cost trade labor in their bid and by exploiting the inevitable errors, omissions, and ambiguities in the plans in the form of change orders over which the client has little, if any, control. Houzz.com is replete with threads posted by unhappy homeowners who are victims of the process.

To paraphrase Gerstel, the competitive bid process is an invitation to compete for the right to adjust the contract price via change orders which are an inevitable part of any custom home building process. If it does serve anyone's interest well, I submit it's the folks getting paid to produce the elusive "perfect" set of plans. Caveat emptor.

We put our plans out to 4 or five builders. The one who got back to us in about 10 days with a pretty solid number was the one we eventually went with. We had wishy washy builders who never would commit to an actual number and others who just strung us along and never gave me a number at all. I am thrilled with our builder and never regretted my choice. We just used a builder to dry-in and then took over. I am sure that shortened the bid time because there was less to consider.

Cyndy........I hope you made 'sure' you got GC pricing from the subs to finish your house unless you both did all of the work yourselves. Subs typically 40-50% higher prices for consumers. That's normal.

The economy has a huge impact as well. We are nearing the end of a period of significant construction activity with everyone having plenty of work so they can be picky about what they do.

We are likely entering a significant slowdown (mmm corp, a key bellwether for investors and economists took a huge tumble this week and lowered expectations for the rest of the year) so many fewer housing starts and a lot of people looking for work.

Ask for bids today and it will take a while. Ask in 6 months and you'll likely get a lot more interest and slightly lower bids. Ask in 1 year and you'll likely get huge interest and lower bids yet.

So Charles...in your experience, what should a consumer do to get the most reliable and realistic competitive bids from general contractors? Just how complete or incomplete should the drawings and specifications be?

Are you suggesting that it's a waste of a consumer's time and money for an architect to prepare "complete" plans and specifications for a residential project?

Would a consumer be better off with simply some sketches, no schedules and no specifications?

And while we're at it, what's the effect on bidding general contractors of the different types of construction contracts, i.e., lump sum, cost plus, and time and materials? In your experience is one type of contract more appealing, or less appealing?

"That's normal."

Normal is a setting on your dryer. 40-50% more is ridiculous. Not unheard of but without a doubt not the hard fact you seem to feel it is.

We bid out twice (due to changes in our plans). The first round we sent it to 3 people. Our fastest "estimate" came back in 4 weeks, middle was 2 months, and the longest 2.5 months - this one with the caveat that it was just an estimate and that we would have to put some money down to get a solid number.

The second time we bid out we sent it to two people - the person who took 4 weeks the last time and 1 other person. The 4 weeks guy took 3.5 months. The other guy had a detailed bid in 2 weeks. He's building our house.

For context, we have very (many builders complained too) detailed plans designed by a licensed architect. Our biggest complaint from builders was that our house was too complicated and they didn't want to deal with it.

What the builders here are saying is, essentially, "don't make your construction drawings and specifications too detailed" because we don't want to take much time to look at them and calculate the construction costs.

Too many drawings, specifications and schedules means too complicated.

We build like we build and we don't need no steekin' drawings and specifications to tell us what to do.

Plus...we don't like competitive bidding. It takes our time and expense and only the low bidder is likely to get the construction contract.

For consumers who want to be at the mercy of builders, pay attention and don't go any further than a schematic set of a few drawings. Forget specifications and schedules.

Make it easy for the builder to add costs through change orders and inadequate allowances.

Too bad to hear this from reputable builders.

Consumers beware.

@ Virgil, this forest has many trees....

My career has been spent in the private sector, not academia, executing real projects, so my perspective is different from yours.

In the real world of residential construction, which is distinctly different from commercial construction-- and even more so from the academic world, we get plans and specifications from architects that go well beyond what is necessary to tie down a project's scope. It's simply a waste of time and the client's design money to specify things that are either required by code or that are generally accepted and well-known construction practices--at least to experienced professionals. Often these details and specifications are produced by young architects with little or no real world construction experience. Sometimes they are just plain comical. Sometimes they conflict with other specifications elsewhere in the same set of plans. Sometimes something really important is buried in a specification instead of being conspicuously noted in the plans and elevations. To be sure, developing clear, accurate, uncluttered, and easy-to-read plans is no simple feat.

Our company stopped competitive bidding more than a decade ago. Our last competitive bid was for a custom home construction project that had more details and specifications than any commercial project I ever worked on (which included multi-million dollar projects.) Despite being the low bidder (by more than $100K) our company's efforts weren't rewarded because even our low bid was twice the budget the client gave to the architect at the beginning of the design effort. The client stopped payment on their check for the final installment of the architect's design fees. We were subsequently called in to testify (again with no compensation) at arbitration. The arbitration judge awarded the architect their design fees for the project. We left empty handed. The client was hosed. That kind of stuff happens in the real world.

Let's agree that we're both professionals and agree to play by the same set of rules: I will gladly offer my nearly 40 years of professional engineering, contracting experience and expertise to provide free competitive bids with detailed cost breakdowns and value engineering ideas when you and fellow architects are willing to produce free construction plans and specifications on the chance the owner will choose to use you for their project. Deal?

Took our builder 3.5 weeks to get us our bid back.

It took our design/build firm about 6 weeks after we finalized the design to give us the cost. (Very small firm that employed sub-contractors.)

@CharlesRossHomes & @Virgil,

Unfortunately there is little to hold people in residential construction accountable.

There are a plethora of stories of architects designing structures well beyond client's stated or even stretched budgets. This happens when the plans are being developed independently for competitive bidding and when a specified builder is involved. Our first attempt came out 60% over our stated budget that the architect & builder had agreed to and our builder's detailed estimate was then 17% over the stretch number that they'd both asked us if we could do only 6 weeks prior.

"I absolutely guarantee you that the contingency number is enough to cover all unexpected costs so you can absolutely rely on this estimate." This was obviously excepting changes that we made. Over and over we were assured that the estimate numbers and contingency were conservative enough that we could count on our builder's estimate. We are not even to to insulation yet and are already 5x that contingency. And that doesn't include $70k in concrete work for a terrace wall that kind of suddenly appeared without notification or discussion to us (and that will require another chunk of $'s for stone).

The quality of work has so far been good though we have concerns with what we've seen so far from the insulation contractor.

We are trying to be patient. We still believe that the end result will have been worth it.

That said, we've no more money left so any cost overruns will mean having to reduce costs elsewhere. When the builder said that they'd now need to do Tyvek + Rainscreen we had to eliminate a couple of light fixtures that my wife really wanted and replace them with less expensive and less appealing fixtures. Hopefully once we move in those lessor-than-we'd-chosen fixtures will disappear in to the background and we'll be happy.

But what else is coming? What other lighting fixtures will have to be downgraded because our builder's estimate was so inaccurate? How many bits of furniture will we have to notify our designer that we can no longer afford because of costs our builder didn't anticipate? How much of the landscaping plan will have to be reduced? Will we even be able to use our chosen landscaper or will we have to go with a lessor landscaper and lessor plan?

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The residential construction industry in the U.S. is getting an increasingly bad reputation. It's an industry that requires a great bit of trust and that trust seems to increasingly be violated.

I think we all can agree that the residential field is full of stories about design and construction activities where the consumer's budget is busted. It happens for all sorts of reasons, including the consumer "just adding this".

And hopefully we can agree that some of the best cost-control practices involve the owner, architect and builder working closely together from the outset of the project. But even this isn't always a guarentee of a favorable outcome.

And, yes, I'll concede that there may be some young or inexperienced architects who draw and specifiy more than necessary...although "necessary" is a very elastic term. In the same vein, can we agree that young, inexperienced and uncaring general contractors don't pay attention to the construction drawings, specifications and schedules--they simply build the way they build?

But...I'll also take a firm stand that an experienced and talented architect knows what's needed and what's not for bidding and construction of a given design. Thus, if it's included in the drawings, specifications and schedules it's because it's important.

It's understandable that many builders don't like competitive bidding. And it's understandable that builders don't like lump sum contracts. It's about risk management and who has the greater risk for financial management. Everyone gets it.

Can we agree that reputable and experienced architects understand how to properly prepare construction drawings, specifications and schedules? And can we agree that reputable and experienced general contractors base their pricing on what the drawings, specifications and schedules contain?

There are indeed reputable architects, designers, builders, and contractors.

I'm not sure that experience or age have anything to do with reputable... Or disreputable.

not a pro and only building 1 small house. But it has been eye opening to see what builders go through. An architect (who I appreciate) is paid for every hour spent. Builders do so much work to put together a plan and cost estimate and aren’t paid until the project is act underway. Our builder has been working on our home off and on for 6+ months and hasn’t gotten a dime ! We feel bad about this sometimes especially as there have been town board meetings and applications and all sorts of risks. The builder attended these town meetings at all hours.

At first we were so frustrated because we felt we couldn’t get a “straight answer” from builders, but they were worried about developing detailed plans that we’d take to a different builder We weren’t sure why they weren’t more responsive or even found them cagey. We didn’t understand a thing about the business or process

i think that there has to be a better way to make costs more transparent to the consumer earlier in the process while Fairly compensating builders for their efforts sooner.

Well...it's a simple matter. Pay the general contractor for preparing a binding bid. If the general contractor is awarded the construction contract, the bid cost can be rolled into the overall construction amount.

By the way...architects don't typically get paid for every hour spent, unless they are working on a hourly rate contract, which is rare.