A Builder

Things are moving along...Deliberately. We have preliminarily selected a builder: the one building a house on property near us. They were the first we met and have been the most responsive. We had a bit of an odd situation with them a few weeks back. We had arranged a joint meeting with our architect, the builder, and us. The afternoon the day before the builder (or more accurately his architect/manager) called saying they couldn't make it and that they really needed a commitment before spending any more time on our bid. This was a bit odd to us. We had some major open issues and the best they had provided so far was one big number and the idea of the meeting was to get more detail and refine the budget hopefully toward making that commitment. I convinced the builder to show after a phone conversation and we dragged out of him what the deal was. They just needed a bit of money $3500-5000 to make it worth their time to do the detailed bidding. I understood this and I guess it was just a situation they weren't use to since they mostly do spec houses.

That issue is now out of the way and on Monday we're going to sign a pre-construction agreement for $3500 so they're compensated. If we move forward with them that'll be credited toward the project. It is a good idea as this allows for all parties to work together to refine and get a more accurate picture of costs. Plus, they are still about $25k over our top budget which we need to find a way to pull some out.