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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There are some home builders advertising very very low prices per square foot. This is the kind of hook that gets the phone ringing and gets people to come in, but is it honest advertising? See this video for the answer.

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