I will be retiring and, hopefully, building on a lot I just recently purchased in Lola. I want your advise on finding a builder that would build to your standards, to the Tom Tynan precise standards, without inflating prices. I understands that the going rate in that area is somewhere between $133 and $150 a square foot with a minimum, according to his HOA, of 2,200 square feet. This is my third home in the last 40 years. I have some definite ideas, but what I don’t have is a way of picking the right builder. What advise do you have?
Terry
Tom: First off, I don’t know if you can find a builder that builds just the way I did, but you need to find a good builder. Let’s talk about those prices.
Charlie: Nobody could ever build like that.
Tom: (Laughing) Well everybody is a little different. You’re going to get a good quality builder. The pricing, though, is right. The pricing he’s getting, even in the homes I’ve built, I could do a really good home my way for about $150, $160 a square foot, so I was on the high end there, but I had made sure they had on demand water heaters and things of that nature, and water softeners too, by the way. As far as that goes, you’re going to have to find a good builder just by luck of the draw, someone you can work with. The plans should be done so the builders have to follow the plans. The plans are construction documents, so someone needs to do the plans for you first and the specifications the way you would want to have it done, like I would do for mine. Everybody has to follow the specifications. It’s not one builder makes it up his way and another builder makes it up their way. It’s all there, written in black and white or drawn in black and white. We don’t use blue prints anymore but on the plants.
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