Should I Buy A Home From This Builder?
Friday, November 7th, 2008
When a buyer is looking for a new construction home, the question always comes up, "Is This A Good Builder?" It’s a loaded question to say the least. Although, the Real Estate Commission will be upset about this, most agents DO have opinions about the builders. The bottomline however, is that an agent’s answers are based purely on their perceptions of a builder or their direct experience. Keep in mind that even the most successful agents whose team closes 600 transactions or more a year, may only have a few transactions with a builder.
Still, the question remains. So should you buy from a builder or not? There are some key things worth mention and I’m also a firm believer in bringing in the inspector early on. Having the inspector there early on will "catch" many of the issues.
See, the truth is that most builders are not inherently bad. Instead it’s the people they hire that make the difference.
For example, you could have a fine, upstanding builder who hires an equally qualified general contractor to manage his subdivision. He in turn hires excellent framers, concrete people, electricians, plumbers, drywallers, painters, carpet people, lighting, landscape and fixture folks and of course, "punch out" people to finish up. There may even be designers, realtors, and other people who have some input. Last but not least, let’s not forget that the county will likely want to inspect and of course they have their own people in on the deal.
If one or two of these "hires" or contractors has a bad day, bad employee … bad "run" then you’ll end up with 5 to 10 homes that all have a leaky shower for instance.
Building a bunch a homes very quickly isn’t always a bad thing, but it gives the builder a smaller margin of error. One wrong move and it’s going to effect 10 homes or more in some cases. Whereas a smaller builder may only be building 1 to 4 homes at a given time.
So how do you find out if a builder is "good" or not? Try to inspect the finished product, try to inspect the product as it’s being built. Then you’ll know the work of the contractors.
Real Estate is Local, so is building. One subdivision does not a builder’s reputation make.