Posted: 12/3/2009 10:04:32 PM EDT
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My wife and I are looking at building a house in the next year or so and have been thinking about getting in bed with someone like trinity custom homes. What are your opinions on the idea, have any of you delt with custom home builders.
we are both thinking this one good or bad idea? |
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Quoted:
you can get twice the house for the same money if u buy in todays market. depending on where u live/wont to build i could set u up with custom builders! then u build what u wont not whats in a package. this Inflation is on the way BIG time. If you can do it sooner you'll be much better off. |
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trinity and a few others that advertise houses for less than $50/square foot are pretty shady. it is just not possible with the cost of building materials and labor. at a minimum, expect to pay $75/ft from a reputable, responsible contractor. depending on the finishes and upgrades, you can easily go to $100/ft.
i spent the last couple of weeks looking at a house by one of these outfits in BFE rural GA. No county inspectors, and unfortunately the homeowner didn't know/understand a lot of the nitty, gritty details of construction. They were getting ready to move in, and started getting random cracks in the drywall ceiling throughout the house. They called me, (I work as a structural engineer out of Macon) and I began to inspect the roof system, which was pre-fabricated wood trusses. it turns out the framer had omitted all of the truss bracing. I suspect when the wind would blow, the trusses would move around a little more than the drywall could allow. Couple that with a crappy tape job, and you get cracks. The real kicker was the girder truss framing. There were two girder trusses in the house which supported most of the roof framing. The truss engineer had designed the the girder trusses to be 3 identical trusses, nailed together to act as one. When I started counting plies, there were only 2 present for each truss...the girder truss was only capable of carrying 2/3 of the design load! Upon climbing down from the attic, I told the homeowner, and he was like "oh, the extra trusses are in the back yard....they told us they were extras."  The framer evidently had some dimensional issues and couldn't make the 3rd ply fit....so he just left it out.
The repairs to remedy the situation have cost thousands of dollars and the poor homeowner hasn't even moved into the house yet. In fairness, I think he still has the contractor over a barrel, since he hasn't paid a large chunk of the bill yet. However, I would wager that if he had already completed payment, the contractor wouldn't be nearly as responsive as he has been. -matt |