Reply to Come along as we build a custom home Thread II--Construction

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How is cost plus going for you?  Are you staying on budget?  Is it giving you enough control over where to add/subtract to suit your needs?[/quote]

I'm still a big fan of cost-plus, with a few caveats:   I have a nearly endless appetite for details, and have approached this as a project manager.  I stay on top of the Builder's accountant to send me every single receipt, which I log into an excel spreadsheet (nothing fancy).  I'm also using Trello to keep myself organized and assign myself (and partner) tasks/follow up items with the builder.  Some of this isn't unique to going cost-plus, per se, but since cost plus shifts the financial risk to the homebuyer rather than the homebuilder, it feels necessary and sensible.  To anyone considering this path, you can save a lot of stress and headaches by going the flat fee route--you give up some control though.

We've saved money by not using an interior designer, and instead relying on our 'life experience' + contractors with good design expertise (architect is the big one, but tile and plumbing fixtures are also examples).  And by staying very hands-on in selections--biggest example is the lighting, which I bought piece by piece myself, and came in 3K under the original budget estimate.

Biggest places we went over (construction only, I'll update the site prep thread I started with a debriefing at the very end)-- were HVAC systems (by 17K), countertops (8.5K), kitchen cabinets (5k).  But we did it knowingly.  With HVAC for example, we went with a 5 stage vs a 2 stage system, as detailed earlier.

Biggest places we saved money-- 12K for lumber (prices came down post COVID), and 18K under on the foundation (Builder planned for worst case).  We may still have some savings in the form of an additional storm drain we may not need.

For construction only we'd estimated 1.053M and I think we'll be at 1.130 or so.  So about 78K over our budget.  However, we saved on some of our site prep, so I think our total cost, all in should still be 1.45M

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