There are a lot of benefits to being your own contractor. There are also some costs. Don’t be fooled by the books that tell you that you can save 50% of the costs by contracting the home yourself. There are some major caveats to that statement. Let’s take a closer look.

Perhaps the most obvious and yet the most overlooked aspect of this equation is time off of work. If you are retired, then you don’t need to worry about this piece; however, for the rest of us time away from our day job is money lost. So what’s the cost? If you have to take 6 months off to build your house, how much is that in lost wages? Add it up. You may find that building your own house is not that cheap after all. I might add that assuming you can build, from start to finish, an entire house in six months might be a little over reaching. Most professional contractors take six to nine months to build a high quality home, and they do it for a living, not as a onetime deal.

So, getting back to the actual cost. If you make $30 per hour and work an average 40 hour week, that means you would take home $28,800 in the six months you are off of work while working on your construction project. Let’s assume that you don’t actually make the minimum six month window. Let’s call it a year, which is a much more honest assessment. That would mean you would lose $57,600 in wages. How expensive is your house? If you figure that the lost wages as a 15% contractor’s profit and overhead figure (what you’re saving by contracting the house yourself) then your house would need to be worth a little more than $375,000 for this to be worth contracting yourself. In other words, you could pay $375,000 to a contractor and have him or her build your entire house for you and still save roughly $1350! In this scenario I’d suggest you stay at work and hire the contractor.

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Greetings everyone. First of all, I’m looking for a bale contractor in West Virginia. Anyone interested?

More over, I’m looking to increase the size of my recommendation file for straw bale contractors around the world. I know there are other places out there where contractors can list their names, and I have reviewed many of those sites over the years. I’m looking to create a resource list on this site as well. If you’re interested in being on my list, please let me know. There would be no charge for this listing and you would be in front of anyone on this website who is looking for a contractor. That’s a lot of people.
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In case you didn’t sign up for the early release information, I want you to know that the Be Your Own Contractor Training registration is now live. You can sign up today at www.BeYourOwnContractorTraining.com. There’s tons of free information on that site to explain exactly what you get by signing up and there’s also a lot of free BYOC information that you can glean from the site even if you decide not to sign up. Either way, the site is worth checking out.

You can save thousands of dollars by being your own contractor, but only if you know what you’re doing. Sign up for my 7 week on-line training course to learn the ropes so that you can have the success you want. Here’s another version of the link: www.BYOCTraining.com. I hope to see you there.

There are less than 300 spaces left in the training, so sign up soon.

I recently worked with a woman who was acting as her own contractor on her project. The building she was working on was a small studio on her own land, which she already owned outright. Nonetheless, she wanted help with her project. The bummer was, she brought me into the mix a little late. She was working from a stock set of plans and ended up spending a lot more money than she needed to.
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Many subcontractors start out confused and cautious when first introduced to alternative construction, but once they get a handle on the process of building an alternative house, most end up happy they decided to join the new process. After all, consider how boring it must be to do the same thing over and over again, day after day. You may even have experience with this yourself in your own job. Most of us like to try new things.
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Here’s another excerpt from the Be Your Own Contractor Training course. Hope you like it.

After all your hard work of looking for the right subcontractor you may suddenly find yourself in the awkward position of dealing with a subcontractor who simply is not dependable. This is certainly an uncomfortable position to be in, yet you’ll need to find a solution to the problem and quickly. Anytime you spend wishing the problem away will be time lost and added expense on your job.
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The fact of the matter is that you will be working with other people when building your home and some of those people will make mistakes, and so will you. That’s okay, and should be expected. There are some basic steps you’ll need to take in order to get things back on track and running smoothly again. The first key is to stay calm and not let the mistake snowball into something worse, especially when it really doesn’t need to. The list below of ways to manage mistakes on the job site is taken from the upcoming Be Your Own Contractor Training course. Although each person handles issues and mistakes differently, this list is a great starting point.
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There are lots of ways to estimate the cost of your house. The reality is that most homeowners turned contractors have very little experience with estimating and have even less experience compiling numbers for labor rates related to specific aspects of the job. As a result, many owner/builder or owner-contracted homes go way over budget. With the right training and practice, however, even someone new to contracting can be successful. Here’s a tip from the Be Your Own Contractor Training course that will help you with your estimating.
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Wondering if your construction plans are adequate to build from? Want to save thousands of dollars on your home construction? I can help you. I have helped hundreds of people achieve their goals and I can help you too. I offer all kinds of services from personal success coaching (www.CoachingBuilders.com) and basic project assistance to 12 month project consulting. I have something for everyone and would be happy to help you create the dream you’ve held in mind for so long.

1. General consulting about straw bale home applicability in specific regions.
2. Initial plan review for basic layout and function.
3. Construction Drawing review with full blown analysis of all straw bale aspects as well as general and specific design considerations.
4. Project consulting with building department support and assistance.
5. Monthly consulting packages for homes under construction.
6. Yearlong package consulting covering the entire scope of the job from start to finish.
7. Personal success coaching (www.CoachingBuilders.com)

Because no two consulting jobs are the same, I offer a number of different ways to pay for the consulting you choose.

1. By the hour with a minimum of 2 hours on each job.
2. Project Packages. These packages allow you access to me on an ongoing basis over a period of:
a. One month
b. Three months
c. Six months
d. One year

The one year package is the most economical way to go if you are actually building a home because a full year of my consulting helps you walk through both the design and construction phases with an expert at your side. I have had very good results with my past clients. Here’s what some had to say.

“I wish I had brought Andrew on earlier in the process. Once he got on board, things smoothed out tremendously.”
Eric G. -Oregon

“The help I got from Andrew was great. What started as a simple plan review ended up saving me thousands of dollars in the long run. The number of mistakes on my plans was crazy, even though I had an architect do the drawings. ”
Sarah P. -California

“I worked with Andrew during the construction of my home. I acted as my own contractor. The support I received from him was priceless. His technical knowledge of straw bale construction was why I decided to work with him, but I really feel like the personal support he offered me throughout the process was what helped me succeed in building my own house.”
Janet F. -Arizona

If you are planning to build your own house, I strongly recommend you hire me to help you along the way. There is a lot to know and it’s easier to hire me to fill in the blanks than it is for you to learn what I have amassed over 12 years in the trade. As an industry leader in Straw Bale Construction, I can help you make your dream a reality and help minimize the stress of the process at the same time.

Contact me today to learn how I can help you.

(image from www.huffingtonpost.com)
When preparing to build a house, money is always a concern. How much will it cost? Where should you focus the money you have? These are basic questions which are always on the page for people as they prepare to build. Make no mistake about it, building a house will be the most expensive thing you ever do. For most people, it is the most in debt they will ever be and so allocating the funds wisely is very important. The energy involved in having so much money tied up in one investment is the root cause for many people’s anxiety and stress when building. Making a few simple decisions up front could be the difference in how much that stress affects you.
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I received an email from someone interested in talking with me about contracting a project in Oakland, Oregon. As I told the author, I am not contracting these days as I am focusing entirely on teaching through my workshops, websites and consulting work. As a result, I have posted the request here for qualified contractors to respond to. Please let me know, via a comment to this blog, if you are interested in the project. I will connect you with the home owners. A project description is below.
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Back in October, I was asked to give some input and support to people who want to build their own house. The main question is “how to get started.” There is a lot to consider and a lot more to actually do, so often the jumping in point becomes the freeze point. In other words, right when you should jump, you freeze and question whether or not you are crazy to even consider building your own place. This may not be a bad question to ponder. Let’s start there.
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This may sound crazy, but a handling the concerns of a neighbor could be the most difficult part of your job. Most contractors and owner builders don’t do much to accommodate neighbors when it comes to building a new house or remodeling an old one. After all, they are not working for the neighbor. in fact, the neighbor really has no direct line of communication or dispute resolution with the contractor or owner builder (unless home owner association CCR’s require one). Even though this is the case, you may be surprised how much trouble a neighbor can create for you.
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It has been a while since I last gave you some tips on being your own contractor. Today, I will let you know some simple tricks of the trade for dealing with banks or mortgage firms. By the time you are ready to discuss your project with the bank, you will already have a full set of plans and an accurate price estimate and critical path. All of these things are absolutely necessary to have in place and for them to be accurate and complete. consider that the money you request and the time period in which you promise to complete the project will all be set in stone when you are done with the loan officer. Be sure you get the details right from the start or you will end up paying heavily in fees to reorganize the loan.
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Thanks for your patience everyone. I have been swamped and unable to make another entry in my blog for some time. Today I want to talk about what it is like to work with your local building department while acting as your own general contractor. You might think that in the progression of events the next piece of the puzzle would be working with your bank, not the building department. After all, you won’t be working with your building department until you are actually ready to build and you won’t be ready until you have the bank funding. Actually, although a common theory, this is totally wrong in my opinion.
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Photo: Library of Congress; reproduction number: LC-USZ62-92466
If I had to choose the primary place where owner builders, and contractors alike, fail when building a home it would be in the estimating of costs. This is one of the most important parts of the job to get right. If you make major mistakes, your job is doomed to fail before it even begins.
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I have written in the past about performing the steps necessary to identify the perfect place to build your house. I fully believe in the importance of knowing your site before you build or even design and furthermore suggest that the information regarding your building site be premiere amongst the important data you work with when designing your home.

As a contractor, there is another site evaluation that needs to happen. Consider that the building plans are already complete and the siting of the house has been decided. What else is there to consider about site evaluation?
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As mentioned in the last post “Part I: Know What You are Getting Into” you must know how to read plans for them to be any good to you. This is true for you as a builder and as a paper contractor. Subcontractors are not perfect and any one of them can misinterpret the plans on any given day. Your ability to catch those mistakes is paramount to the time line and ultimately the bottom line for your home.
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It is important that you fully understand what will be expected of you as you embark on the contracting of your home. It is easy to say that you want to contract the construction, but there is a lot to the process and perhaps the biggest pitfall is not knowing what will be asked of you before you start down that road. Nothing will create more worry in your process than realizing you are in way above your head only to realize it is too late to do anything about it.
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Photo courtesy of Midland Contractors, Inc. (www.midlandinc.com)

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting information about how to be your own contractor. Many of the people I talk to are excited about the idea of contracting their own house; however, once they get knee deep, they start to realize why contractors are paid the money they are. There is a lot to being a quality contractor and simply having a desire to do it yourself is not enough to do it well. You will need knowledge and a plan. You will need forms and contracts. You will need help.
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