OUR BUILD PROCESS

We will meet you at one of our various model homes and show you realistic examples of what to expect in the price ranges you are shopping. We won’t show you the nicest model home with a bunch of options you might not want or may not be able to afford. We’ll take you out to show you homes under construction so you can get comfortable with our quality and construction.

We have a large portfolio of plans which we are always adding to. In many cases we also have older plans that a New Home Specialist might be aware of that we don’t actively advertise but that we can build. You’ll sit down with your Specialist and make the necessary pre-construction sketches to estimate the costs and all of the options and customizations to make the home your own.

We will connect you with some trusted lenders who specialize in construction loans. Not many bankers do them, so the guy who knows a guy who knows your brother probably isn’t the best choice. We’ll have them run some preliminary numbers based on the lot you own (or want to buy) and your financial situation as we explain in future sections of this guide.

Your specialist will sit down with you and build a “price-up” sheet that is based with extensive historical cost information we have from new home builds in various cities and counties. A house is a house right? Well, not so quickly. Going 2 miles one direction could put you into an area where the local building officials require various changes to the ways we normally build. We have no control over those costs and they can increase the cost to build, but we will give you a transparent estimate where you can see a breakdown of how we are coming up with these costs. Some pickup truck builders may say you can do without this or that, but we want to build a home for you the way we would build it for our own family, so we won’t cut corners here to save a few bucks. With this “price up” sheet we will have an idea of what to expect for your total investment, the lot, financing, permits, site clearing, tree work, etc.

We are Transparent & Authentic right? Well at this point we’ve given you a more detailed estimate than most builders can even give you. BUT we still don’t want to sign a construction contract with you. We don’t want you to feel like you’re “trapped”. Sure, we could sell more houses by writing a contract with open ended allowances providing YOU with a lot of financial risk, but we are successful as a company because we don’t feel that’s the right thing to do.

Our version is a little different here, we sign a pre-construction agreement where in the next 45-90 days one of our site superintendents and your New Home Specialist will perform due-dilgence and research on every one of the lines included in your “price-up” sheet. We will confirm that all of those amounts are definite as well as any local or site specific changes. We’ll meet you at the building site and figure out where you’d roughly like the home. When this stage is complete, your New Home Specialist will present you with a final detailed proposal, customized for your home with a fully drafted floorplan for review with dimensions. If you’ve made changes to the layout, stretched the garage or added some space, you’ll have a final floorplan drawing to review. After all of this we want you to be comfortable signing a construction contract. There is a non-refundable deposit at this point, but if you don’t proceed we will give you everything we have from due-diligence in the hopes that you can come back to us later when things make sense.

Not ready? Costs too much? The well required is 700ft and $30,000 not 150ft and $10,000? That’s fine. No need to proceed, but as we said above we will give you the siteplan, and all the backup documentation, soil tests, septic deisgns, well drilling records, etc to everything we have figured out or confirmed for you.  Let’s say things are confirmed and we’re still right at that comfortable budget for you and your family. At this point we will proceed to signing a fixed price contract with you. What does that mean? We won’t litter the contract with allowances which leave us with no accountability on the jobsite. You’ll know what the house will cost down the penny (Unless you change something during construction, which we will address in writing with a firm cost in our customer portal before ANY work is done.)

Now that we have a construction contract our engineering and site superintendent will begin to lay the groundwork, documents, final construction blueprints while you setup financing. Since we’ve already introduced you to a few banks, at this point they will ask for some things from us like the plans, specifications and a sworn statement. We’ll do our part, you’ll do your part by providing bank statements, W2’s, etc as we mention in the financing section later on. IF you are buying a lot and don’t already own your land, the banker, title company and our New Home Specialist will help you setup the purchase of that land at the right time.

Are you paying cash? If you’re paying cash our internal office team will work with you and a local title company to setup a construction escrow. We don’t want to hold your cash. We will use a secure third party licensed escrow through a title company to ensure all the bills and invoices paid as part of construction are up to snuff and protect clear title to your property.

Now that funding is in place, you will meet with your Site Superintendent who will setup a final lot inspection. At that lot inspection, we’ll review final plans, options, selections and details about the site, driveway, etc. We’ll give you an official start date in coordination with your bank at this time. Remember we can’t start construction without the contract deposit and an open construction loan from your bank, so some of the timing here is dependent upon the bank you choose to use.  During this stage you’ll also gain access to our exclusive online customer portal, which helps keep all communication in one spot and allows you to easily make your colors and selections on your own time on your own pace.

Now the easy part, sort of. That was a lot of work huh? We told you this was a long and complicated process but seeing your new home come to live from the ground will be worth it. Your home is the first one with these customizations on this unique site and the excitement begins. Remember at some point during the construction process you WILL be upset with us. You might think that a certain bathtub looked different on the website or that a fireplace looked a little more modern than you thought. These feelings are normal. We’ll do everything reasonably in our power to come up with a solution and work through issues that naturally come up during construction.

About a week before completion of your home and the final settlement (similar to a closing on a home purchase) your site superintendent will setup a time to do a through final walkthrough with you. We will familiarize you with some new features of your new home as well as the location of shutoffs and other unique features. We’ll also do a industry standard “punchlist” where we will notate anything that needs to be completed or repaired that may have been scratched, dinged or damaged during construction. (We told you it isn’t always pretty!) The good news is that our punch-out team and trades work very hard in the final week to complete 99% of the punchlist and the only items we typically leave “open” after settlement are things that we have to order which take weeks to get, IE a torn window screen or a damaged cabinet door. Our awesome warranty team will help you with those once you’ve been handed over to their capable hands!

Final settlement is like a closing on an existing home or a new home in one of our communities. The biggest difference here is that you already own the land, we own the sticks and bricks that make up your home. At the Final Settlement we will provide you with a recap of the financial details you have already agreed to along the way and you or your banker will provide the funds for what is called the “final draw” which will complete the construction process and transition you into the warranty period. The fun isn’t over yet!

Our company spends over $200,000 a year in our warranty department. That might sound shocking, we must have a lot of things going wrong huh? Well we don’t, most of that is people, technology and processes to make sure you’re happy after we’re done building the home, because part of the experience is the service after we’ve “finished”. We don’t consider ourselves finished until 13 months after the settlement, because we will provide you with a 30 or 60 day walkthrough to review any items that might crop up right after move in, a dedicated warranty technician (not just a superintendent who has inspections and other customers to take care of, who thinks of your home last in the day like other builders.) and a dedicated internal warranty coordinator who will answer your portal warranty requests usually within the hour if not minutes. You’ll have that person’s personal cell phone so if there’s an after hours emergency you know who you can call or text. If you’re unsure if something is a warranty item, you can text her a picture and she will get you some answers. If you haven’t noticed, we take this warranty thing pretty seriously and pride ourselves on taking it more seriously than most other builders. We used to be like most other builders until we realized that this was a great way to set us apart from all those other builders who look at the warranty period as an afterthought. We’ll wrap up the warranty period with a 12 month walk through and fix anything that we need to under the warranty and ensure that it all gets wrapped up, rather than sending you automated letters and emails denying warranty claims on the 359^th day of your warranty like some builders do. Meet the Warranty Team Here.