Building a Custom Home? 12 Things You Need to Decide Before Drywall
You’ve spent months designing your dream home. The foundation is poured. Framing is complete. Electrical and plumbing rough-ins are underway. Everything is finally starting to feel real. But there’s one critical phase of construction that homeowners should never overlook. The period before insulation and drywall is one of your last opportunities to make relatively inexpensive […]
10 Costly Mistakes to Avoid When Building a Custom Home in Texas
Building a custom home in Texas is one of the most exciting investments you’ll ever make. It’s an opportunity to design a home around your lifestyle, your family, and the features you’ve always wanted. But building a custom home also involves hundreds of decisions, dozens of subcontractors, and a construction process that can take well […]
Your Builder’s Vendor Relationships Can Make or Break Your Custom Home
You Are Hiring More Than a Builder When you hire a custom home builder, you are also indirectly hiring the network that surrounds that builder. The framer, electrician, plumber, HVAC contractor, cabinet company, roofer, concrete crews and dozens of specialty trades all influence the final house. The builder coordinates those companies, but the strength of […]
The $8,000 Mistake That Cost a Contractor $350,000+ in Future Business
The Expensive Side of Winning a Small Dispute Construction companies negotiate money every day. Material prices move, scopes change and unexpected costs appear. But a contractor can win a pricing dispute and still lose financially. In Episode 15 of Dallas Builders Club, we discussed a real vendor relationship that illustrates the point. An HVAC contractor […]
Big Builder vs. Small Builder: Who Is Actually Building Your House?
The Name on the Sign vs. the Person on the Site When homeowners choose a custom builder, they often focus on the company name, portfolio, reputation and price. There is another question that can have an enormous effect on the experience: Who will actually be involved in building the house? Large and small builders can […]
Why the Best Luxury Home Builders Aren’t Trying to Build Every House
One of the biggest mistakes service businesses make is assuming every potential customer should become a customer. In luxury custom home building, that’s especially dangerous. A custom home can take years from the first conversation through design, construction and move-in. The builder and client are going to make hundreds—sometimes thousands—of decisions together. That’s a relationship. […]
The Most Valuable Skill in Construction Isn’t Construction
If you’ve never built a custom home, you might assume the best builders are the people who know the most about construction. Construction knowledge obviously matters. But there’s another skill that becomes increasingly important as your projects get larger: Creative problem-solving. Because something will go wrong. Actually, a lot of things will go wrong. There […]
What Building Inspectors Notice About Great Custom Home Builders
One of the best compliments you can receive as a home builder doesn’t come from Instagram. It doesn’t come from another builder. Sometimes it doesn’t even come from the homeowner. It comes from an inspector. We’re currently building a roughly 13,000-square-foot custom home in Farmers Branch, Texas. As the project approached second inspection, the inspectors […]
Could AI Become a Construction Project Manager’s Best Assistant?
I hate email. There. I said it. One of the biggest productivity killers when you’re managing multiple construction projects is the sheer volume of communication. Clients. Vendors. Trades. Architects. Designers. Engineers. Inspectors. Employees. Every one of those people needs answers. And every email isn’t equally important. You can come back from a few days away […]