What is the best house builder's company?

Question

Best house builders company? that i know will do a good job and is really good. do you have any opinions?

Answer 1

Depends on where you live! Good place to find construction companies specializing in building houses is the yellow pages of your phone book:
Select several companies: Then contact your Better Business Bureau to see if they have any complaints against them.
Then contact your local home builders association and see if they have any complaints against them.
Then after narrowing it down contact the companies themselves. Ask them for the names of people who they have built houses for. Call those people talk to them about the contractor and find out from them how satisfied they are with the job the contractor did. Try to get names of people who have had their homes built recently and names of people who have had their homes built several years ago.
Next contact the local trades unions and see if the contactor is a union contractor. If so how prompt he or she has been in paying his or her employees.
The major advantage of a contractor being a union contractor is the quality of work. Union Electricians, Union Plumbers, Union Carpenters are going to do as a rule better quality work because they have the union standards to live up to. No to say non union Electricians, Plumbers, Carpenters aren't as qualified. Just that the contractor can't force the union Electricians, Plumbers, Carpenters to take short cuts under fear of lossing their jobs.

Once you have narrowed it down more next check and make sure the contractor is licensed and bonded in your state and city.
Now the fun starts: after you have it narrowed down to several contractors you like you start the bidding on the job part of getting your home built. (How much they are going to charge you to build the house). the key here is the cheapest is not always the best. This is where you are going to have to watch it closely.
Cheaper can mean using particale board instead of plywood!
untreated lumber instead of treated lumber
off brand fixtures of inferior quality both plumbing and electrical.
having only bare minimum code acceptance.
Insulation not as good or lower R rating.
time not specified i.e. working on your house to fill in when work is slow. i.e. moving his crews to work on your house when has nothing else for them to do.

Ok! now here is the critical factor! Once you have gotten your home builder and they are on the job site working on your home stay out of the way and let them work! Don't always be there looking over their shoulders! And remember this if you start making a bunch of changes it is going to cost you more. The more changes you make the morei it is going to cost you over the agreed on price of your home.

Oops ALMOST FORGOT A COUPLE OF CRITICAL ITEMS!

Talk to your local building inspectors about the contractor and see what they think about him and his work.

Also find out if he sub contracts out the work i.e. subcontracts out to different companies to do the work. You don't want that because of the legal problems which can arise if he doesn't pay the sub contractors. In a lot of cases you will be liable. Also in the case of someone getting hurt you could also be held liable if he is sub contracting the work out.