I am neither an architect nor a home builder, but in all my work I have always had a sincere desire to seek the truth, wherever that may lead.  As a real estate attorney for 20 years I saw repeating patterns in which consumers kept getting the short stick in their relationships with other professionals (lawyers, accountants, financial advisers, architects, contractors, real estate agents, auto mechanics, and the list goes on).  After years of recognizing the pattern that was far from consumer-centric, I learned to ask new questions.  I learned that it was not wise to assume, but much wiser to do one’s due diligence and to carefully reconsider conventional wisdom.

It is conventional wisdom that if you are planning to have your next home built,  you should first hire an architect.  It is that part of me that has been through the school of hard knocks on behalf of hundreds of clients who got hurt by such assumptions, that causes me to question it and to review the entire process and experiences of many who have gone before.

So the question is, “Who do you hire first–the architect or the home builder?”  Most would assume the answer is the architect.  But is that true, and what are the implications of hiring the architect first?  Let’s play this out by running parallel experiences–one where the client hires the architect first, and the other where the client hires the home builder first.

Hire the Architect First.  A California couple had been reading about Sequim for five years and decided to purchase an incredible 10 acre parcel overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  Once they purchased their property, they contacted a Seattle architect, because an architect they knew of in Santa Barbara had recommended him.  After some meetings, telephone calls, and emails, they signed a contract with their Seattle architect.  A standard fee for a Seattle architect is 8% to 10% of the cost of the house.  Since the house was estimated to cost $1 million, their architect’s fee would be about $100,000.

The architect immediately began the detailed architectural plans, which would take many weeks.  The architect had a good friend who was a custom home builder (also in the Seattle Metro area), and he strongly urged his clients to hire that builder.  He did mention a couple of other builders, but his voice and facial expressions gave him away, and clearly the only builder he trusted was “the one.”  He did not mention to his clients that he refers all the business he can to that builder who is a good friend.  In the real world, it is common for referrals for expensive projects to be richly rewarded under the table.  I will assume that did not happen in this case, but let’s not be naive to conflicts of interest that may cost consumers a lot of money without them ever knowing.

The clients accept their architect’s recommendation to the Seattle builder who is willing to build a home in Sequim.  He may even say as a matter of fact that he has built homes in Sequim or Port Angeles.  When the architect finishes his work, he gives the plans to the builder.  There hasn’t been a lot of communication between the two.  The architect is an artist, and all he really wants to see is that his masterpiece is built within his vision.   The architect is not a builder, never has been, and is not good at estimating the actual cost of materials and labor to implement his vision.  Therefore, the architect has many expensive features in the design that the clients would not want if they knew it would add greatly to the cost for a pretty but not especially functional purpose.

On the other hand, the custom home builder is concerned about cost, and he recognizes those features that add excessive costs, but he has a great relationship with the architect, who referred these clients to him, and so the builder does not spend a lot of time educating his clients about ways to reduce the cost while achieving their personal dream within their original design concept.  The clients trust their architect and their builder.  Both are at the top of their profession, and they are not cheap.  They must be the best, and surely they have their client’s interests in mind.

As the builder begins building the home, he finds a number of small but not inexpensive nuances in the architectural plans.  They are actually mistakes or features the architect literally did not address or forgot.  For example, the architect did not include drainage spouts on the house, which also did not address the need for curtain drains and the additional drainage needed around the house.  The plans had to be sent back to the architect, edited, and then builder would implement the edited plans.  This change alone added almost $12,000 to the total cost.  But there were half a dozen other changes the builder recommended were essential to avoid other problems in the future.

What did not happen here that should have was a good line of communication between the architect and the home builder from the very beginning.  When cost is not a factor for the professionals involved, communication is less important, and educating the clients to more efficient ways to complete the design they have in their minds is also less important.

In this case, the completed cost of the home, not counting the price of the land, was $1.25 million.  The architect charged $100,000.  The clients got their home, but there were numerous features they paid for that they did not need and would not have paid for if they had known how much those features added.

One of the lessons here is that architects are not motivated to keep costs down.  They are motivated to see their vision completed by a builder.  A builder who has a lock with a Seattle architect is most likely a very expensive builder who is also not motivated to reduce the cost to the client.  The higher the price of the home, the more the builder makes.  Most builders are paid on a cost-plus contract.

Hire the Home Builder First.  Home builders are not all the same, just like Realtors are not all the same.   It is critical to do your due diligence to find a truly competent and honest home builder who will give you straight estimates and be honest with you throughout the project planning and construction.  You can literally discuss your design plans with this kind of home builder and talk about how he works with an architect to make sure that your home is built the way you want it built.

But there is another huge factor that is vitally important to you, and that is your home builder must understand your budget and your priorities.  This means your home builder must work to help you achieve your goal without wasting a single dollar on features you don’t really care about.  That cupola is cute, but would you really want it if you knew it would cost you $7,000?  Probably not.  That ceiling dome in the dining room the architect designed is beautiful, but would you pay for it if you knew that a first class ceiling dome was made of fiberglass, gypsum or polyurethane, and would add $18,000 to the cost of your home?  Maybe not.

Hiring a builder who is on your side means he is not motivated to inflate the cost of your home, or to accept an architect’s design that will cost you a lot more.  A good builder can suggest ways to the architect that will actually reduce the cost of your home.  Remember, the architect is not trained in estimating costs or motivated to keep costs down.  But a concientious builder can work with you and an honest architect as a team to achieve your goals within your budget.  By the way, be sure your home builder is not using a cost-plus contract, but a guaranteed contract price.  That’s honesty and integrity.

In this second scenario, the builder and the architect communicated from the very beginning.  In fact, the builder and the architect sat down together before anything was put to paper, and they discussed the clients’ goals and desires and budget.  The architectural plans were designed with all that in mind, and the architect charged $9,000, not $100,000.  It gets better.  The home builder was able to build the client’s dream home for $800,000, not $1.25 million.

These two scenarios are based on true stories, although I have not revealed any names or specifics in order to protect the guilty.  The real point of this exercise is to share real life information with you so that you can make wise decisions for you and your family.  One of my life’s passions is protecting consumers from those who pretend to work in consumers’ best interests but don’t.

You’ll read many articles on the Internet insisting that your best approach is to hire an architect first, but it’s simply not in your best interests, at least not in the real world.  I have a simple statement that answers a lot of questions when you are trying to find out the truth of someone’s motivation.  I like to say that the answer is often revealed if you just “follow the money.”

Would I take a referral fee for referring someone to a builder or to an architect?  I would, but only if the builder or the architect were truly working in the client’s best interests, and the fee they paid me did not in any way compromise their dream or the cost to achieve their dream.  In any event, I would discuss that with my client, because I believe in full disclosure.  Most of all, I believe that consumers deserve the whole truth and unconditional honesty and loyalty from the professionals they hire.

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We know lot sales are down and new home construction has been slow, but are Sequim or Port Angeles contractors building homes?  The answer is yes.  Rick Anderson, founder of Anderson Homes, LLC, is building homes.  Rick has built over 400 homes in Clallam County since 1981, and has a reputation for quality homes at affordable prices.  It is almost certain that Rick Anderson has the highest customer satisfaction rate of any local home builder, and I can say that because hundreds of clients talk to me about their builder experiences.  There are other good builders, but I know of no other builder who has so many clients who are truly pleased with the end product and the entire process.

This photo was taken as the sun is setting across the tree tops.  When a home is under construction, it is hard to tell what it will look like as a completed home, but stay tuned because we are going to provide you with a video of the entire construction process of this home when it is complete.

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How do you know if your Sequim home builder will really build your retirement home with the kind of quality you have dreamed about for years?  Of course, one answer is that you won’t until you are living in it for a while.  The other answer, which is the better one is to find a home builder whom you are certain can guarantee that you will get the custom home you have dreamed about for so long.

You will know right away if your home was built with quality and attention to detail right after you move in, and typically you will have an opportunity to give the builder a checklist up to the point at which the one year warranty period ends.  In this article I’m going to share a little insider knowledge with you, but I think you will see the clear logic of what I share.

Some home builders around the country advertise that their home warranty team will come  after you move in and fix anything that wasn’t built right the first time.  That’s not how they phrase it.  The advertisements make it sound like this is a special benefit that only this builder offers, and that you should realize how lucky you are to have this warranty team to fix your home.  Frankly,  if I was a builder, I wouldn’t be advertising that I couldn’t get it right the first time.  The fact that a builder has to send carpenters to fix things in your home, and that this is part of his business model ought to tell you something.  Apparently there are so many things wrong in so many of their homes, they have to have a  regular repair team.  (By the way, you don’t need a home warranty team to fix standard fixes like screw heads that have punched through Sheetrock.)

If you hire the best custom home builder, your home will be nearly perfect when you move in.  There simply won’t be a list of problems to fix, because the quality builder has his own quality control right up to the walk-through before you move in.  Once you’ve been living in your new home for up to a year, you may have things that need to be fixed, but with a quality builder these will not be construction defects.  They will be simple things like a screw head that has popped through the plaster.  New homes do expand and shrink, and minor Sheetrock repair is normal.  The other noticeable issue will be small hairline cracks in the concrete floor in the garage.  In fact, a few small cracks in concrete are to be expected–this is the rule rather than the exception.  Concrete shrinkage is normal, but major cracks or droppage by a quarter of an inch is not normal.  That would indicate the subsurface was not properly filled and/or compacted.

Most builders do offer a one year home warranty.  That’s good because there may be some normal things that do need fixing.  But we’re not talking about major problems because the home wasn’t built right.  A one year warranty checklist might include an examination of the following items:  driveway, sidewalk, front stoop, patio, landscape/grading, siding, trim, windows, doors (including threshold, weatherstripping, locks), roof shingles, gutters and downspouts, flashings, deck, caulking, heat and a/c, electrical, and any Sheetrock issues in the house.

When you are interviewing builders in Sequim or Port Angeles, I recommend asking about their warranty, but it should be a red flag for you if the builder starts talking about how he has a regular crew of repairmen who come to fix all of your home’s problems right after you move in.  If that’s a standard practice, then defects are also standard.

Looking for a quality custom home builder?  Call me or email me for a referral.  You will not be disappointed.

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Building your retirement home in Sequim or Port Angeles?  How are you going to decide how to find and hire your home builder.  Hiring a general contractor is no small decision.  Does your home builder need adult supervision, or can you trust your builder to be competent and trustworthy?  Believe me, this is not a demeaning or unfair question.  I saw so many people who had nightmares with home builders as a lawyer, what happened in this video is not nearly as unusual as one might think.   All I suggest is that you do your due diligence in selecting your home builder, and if I can offer some tips from the school of hard knocks of hundreds of clients, what have you got to lose by watching this video?  Here’s another true story heard far too often by good retirees.

I want your move to Sequim or Port Angeles to be a positive experience, not a nightmare.  If I can help, email or call.

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Selecting the right Sequim home builder is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as you make your retirement plans, so a little due diligence on your part would clearly be wise. Here’s a short video on hiring a great home builder.

If you would like to discuss building your next home, email or call.  This is a free service with no obligation.  I know the Sequim home builders and Port Angeles home builders.

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Sequim home surplus–is there one and is it effecting home builders?   There is a surplus of homes that buyers don’t want, and there are some foreclosures and short sales out there.   There are also some homes that spec builders have had on the market for months and even years.   Do these homes on the market at discounted prices effect home builders?   Absolutely.

For the vast majority of buyers from California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Montana these homes in the existing inventory with discounted desperation price tags are not appealing.   There will be a buyer who looks at one and says, “Oh my God!   This is it!”   They’ll buy it and live happily forever.   But that’s the exception.

I wrote above that, “There is a surplus of homes that buyers don’t want.”   These are homes that have been for sale for a long time, and either because of their location, the age and/or architecture of the home, or some really unattractive feature that does not appeal to 99% of the population, these are homes buyers generally just don’t want.   So they sit.   These are not the homes that home builders are concerned about.   They are not competition for a new home.

The homes that builders will be glad to see gone are the deep discounted spec homes and the few foreclosures that are on the market.   While the majority of buyers do not want these homes because they do not fit their parameters, still some buyers will chose to buy one of these instead of having a custom home built.

But the biggest factor for home builders is not the existing inventory.   Clients who would hire a builder to have their retirement home built in Sequim or Port Angeles have largely put their plans on hold this past year.   That seems to be changing just in this past two months as buyers are purchasing lots and hiring builders again, but the stock market crash combined with the real estate market crash put building plans on hold for many retirees during 2008 and the first half of 2009.

If you are considering buying a lot in Sequim or Port Angeles, I recommend you search free online for lots at:

Sequim Lots for Sale

And if you are considering hiring a home builder with integrity and a proven track record for quality and customer satisfaction, I recommend:

Sequim Custom Home Builder

And if I can answer any questions, you know how to reach me.   chuckmarunde@gmail.com or 360-775-5424.

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One of my greatest concerns for consumers involves home builders who suck people into their office with ads promoting ridiculously low price per square foot rates.   Once might ask why I write about this issue, and the answer is because people keep falling into this trap for the unwary.   Again and again.   Here is a real testimony of a consumer who hired one of these “low price per square foot” builders.   I’ve left her words as she wrote them.   I prefer not to specifically name her builder in this article, but this company is not the only one like this.   This is the reason I harp on doing one’s due diligence when hiring a home builder.   Here’s her true story.

Where does one begin when dealing with [name deleted]? They make it sound like a breeze (promised 4 months and our house would be done) HA! About 1 year and 3 month later we moved in but the house still wasnt complete. We have been in the house 4 months and the house is still not done. Of course they say that once you move in (which we were told to do by the site supervisor since we were way past out move in date) nothing on the punch list will be completed. So we withheld the last payment for carpet (about $3500) and they put a lein on our house! All this after our first back wall fell over (with the windows in!) so they were just going to put up the wall again. My husband told them NO WAY so they rebuilt the wall and put the damaged windows back in! So needless to say we had to fight for a month or more to get them to replace the windows and I think one is a damaged one. My husband was there everyday checking on things and making them do things over and over again. It was NEVERENDING.

Holes in walls that wires were coming through going nowhere.
Bowed walls from sheetrock over warped boards.
Cabinets sitting in our living room for over 4 weeks.
Doors not shutting or fitting properly.
Wrong counter top installed in bathroom.
Crooked siding.
Downspout placed in wrong location.
No ducting or vent in laundry room.
No electricity to the jetted tub.
Cabinet drawers and cubboards not operating properly.
Outlets wired backwards.
No power to outlets on one wall in bedroom.
No window screens ever delivered.

Unfortunatly their repairs were almost worse than the original problem. To fix one of the problems with the sheetrock they sent out 2 guys who worked for 6 hours (we also fed them lunch) to repair 2 spots the size of a small book. And still it looked horrible so he said ‘your done’ and we had his brother fix it. In fact we paid ALOT of $ out of our pocket to my brother in law to fix their mistakes. We went through 2 site supervisors and many delays. The things I have listed above are still not corrected. The company was ALWAYS calling us on the 5th of the month if they didnt get their draw check but do you think we ever got a call about our problems OMG NO! We got NO response from them until filing a complaint with the BBB. NOW they are willing to meet with us. Please Please Please read their contract it was written by them to profit ONLY them. They dont care about you only your CASH $$$$.

There you have it.   How do you avoid this kind of nightmare?   Find the best builder in the area. How do you do that?   Talk to the right people.   Be careful, even this builder in the story above had employees and some others saying how great they are.   Be very careful.   If you’re building in Sequim or Port Angeles, let’s talk.   I won’t mislead you.   Did I tell you I offer my advice free?   Where are you going to get a retired 20-year real estate attorney who knows most of the builders in the area, and who is a real estate broker who can advise you on building your next home . . . all free of charge?   Right here.   Chuck Marunde at 360-775-5424.

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A couple move to the Sequim area from California and plan to build their retirement home.   They’re excited about it, but it proves to be stressful just finding the right architect and the right builder.   How do they select their builder?   (Be careful of architects who try to lock you into “their” builder.   That’s another story for another time.)

They meet with three builders and get bids from all three.   The first builder they go to is Rick Anderson of Anderson Homes, LLC.   Rick has built over 400 homes here since 1981, and has a solid reputation for honesty and the highest quality of homes, but he also has extremely competitive rates when you compare apples with apples.   Rick plays no games and doesn’t boast.   He shows them exactly what he will do for them and gives them the honest-to-God truth about the true cost per square foot, and he is willing to guarantee that price in a written contract.

The second builder they go to looks at Rick Anderson’s bid, because the owners share that information with him.   He says, “Oh yea, I can beat that bid.”   Of course he can.   Shave here, shave there.   Use lesser material, don’t install this or that, cut this out.   That was easy.   But the nice clients don’t realize how this works, and they think, “Oh, good he beat Rick’s price.   Rick must have given us a high bid.”   (Not true.)

The third builder they go to looks at Rick Anderson’s bid and at the second bid.   He says, “Oh yea, I can beat both those bids.”   Of course, he can.   He just takes the second bid with those lesser specifications, and since he works out of the back of his pickup truck and plans to do ALL the work himself at what will work out to minimum wage, his bid is lower than the cost of the other two builders.

They select the builder who gave them the lowest bid.   He seems like a nice guy.

So what happens?   Let’s play this out with two possibilities.   First, what could happen if they choose the lowest bidder?   Well, he may not be able to finish the house as a one-man show who is struggling financially to survive and cutting every possible corner to get the cheapest materials.   He may not have the experience of a more experienced and financially stable builder, so this is also the kind of scenario you may have read about where the house only gets partially built and the builder bails.   Can you say, “nightmare scenario.”   That was the lowest bidder.   Do you really want to the lowest bidder?   I know.   Seemed good at the time.   How much stress would you like to add to your life when a different decision could have saved you a lot of money, stress, and time?

So what happens if you are wise enough to avoid the one-man lowest bidder?   You hire the middle bidder.   Okay.   Here’s how that plays out many many times. When the house is completed, three months past its completion date, you calculate that you have paid more than the original guaranteed bid that Rick Anderson gave you.   There were extras, change orders, and surprises during the entire construction process, starting with the excavation and concrete and all the way through to the end.   You’re tired of fighting with the builder.   You feel like he has misrepresented the construction process and costs from the get go, but once you had signed the contract and work began, you felt you were in too deep to go back.

You talk to your neighbors who had their house built by Rick Anderson.   You ask them how it went, and they start smiling and chatting enthusiastically about how much they love their home, about how enjoyable it was working with Rick, and how their home was finished on time and at the original guaratneed contract price.   You look at the quality of their home inside, and you can’t help comparing the trim and the cabinets and the flooring, and the doors and hardware to your own home.   You end up saying what a lot of people say, but they hate to admit it.   “We should have hired Rick Anderson.”

I kid you not.   This is an honest and real scenario.   This happens all the time.   This is not sales hype or exaggeration.   I’ve written this bold honest article to try to break through to good people moving here from California and Arizona who make the two mistakes above.   Do you know the biggest mistake these folks made?   They never brought those two lower bids back to Rick Anderson to have him do a honest apples verses apples comparison.   He would have been absolutely honest about the comparison, and he never pressures anyone to sign a contract.   Anyone who wants to make fully informed and wise decisions about building their retirement home ought to do a true comparison.   They could have and should have brought those bids back for another meeting with Rick Anderson.   Then they could have made intelligent and fully informed decisions.   Now they know that.   Now you know this.

So, what are you going to do?

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Building a home today is challenging enough working through the complex credit and loan issues, finding the right lot in the right area, and negotiating a good price, and then finding a good builder who can build your dream home at a price within your budget. It can get real complicated if your builder is a discount builder who doesn’t tell you all you need to know before you sign the contract. Watch this short video on the subject.

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Building a new home or a custom home?   What a buyer’s market this is for you, both the lot and in hiring a home builder.   But there are discount home builders out there who are sharing less than the whole truth in their advertising.   In fact, many home builders are leading with what I believe is unquestionably deceptive advertisting or what you could call fraudulent advertising.   Here’s a short video intended to help you avoid a nightmare.

Be so careful who you hire for your next home builder. You’ll be glad you were.

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