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[quote=Anonymous]
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OP, you said at the beginning that you hired separate companies instead of design build because you thought it would be less expensive. But then you had to hire more people like a permit expeditor. I'm curious if it came out cheaper in the end. We investigated both ways and went with a design-build firm because it was less $ and also because I wanted ONE company responsible for everything. I didn't want the headache of one place pointing to another or things falling through the cracks that were no one's job.

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Its a really good question that I'm not sure of the answer, because its so hard to truly comparison shop.  We did briefly look at design-build, but some of the wouldn't work with us (these were firms that generally work in close-in MoCo).  They didn't really say 'no', just took forever getting back to us, or said they had waiting lists to get started, etc etc. Reading between the lines:  I think they didn't love the idea of a lone project far away from their usual work.  It's extra time on the road between project sites.  Far better from their point of view if they've got 3 builds going in more or less the same neighborhood.

The one that did give us a quote was about equal to one of the builders...but that was early on before we'd settled on some key details like an almost all brick & stone exterior and upgrading the HVAC system.

The one cost I'd say we got burned on so far was the permit expeditor.  She was fantastic, but the County was so unbelievably incompetent that she had to rack up the hours helping them do their job.  We'd budgeted 15K for a permit expeditor anyway.  And we more than doubled that.

I've read articles that a design-build firm will add about 20% to the cost of the build.  Probably a lot of flex on that, but if that's true, I'd say we're still ahead as far as costs.  Plus, we get much more control and insight into the whole process, which we like.

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