Guide to choosing an ADU builder
When choosing a builder, it’s important to know what characteristics you want, what characteristics you don’t want and what kind of partner they will be. There are many different builders and many different styles of pricing and many different levels of experience and capitalization. You will be working with this person for 9 to 12 months, several times a week, so you need to have some level of trust and respect that may transcend other factors but not at the exclusion of other factors. So, if I’m building an ADU, here is what I’m looking for in a builder.
Trust and Cooperation As an owner, I need to be able to get along with my builder, find my builder and trust my builder. If he says it’s going to be 3 weeks, I need to be confident it will be around 3 weeks (you’re not going to get exact). If I hate talking to him or don’t believe anything he says, it’s going to be a long and expensive build. You don’t have to be best buds, but find someone you likely will enjoy working with.
Competence Experience can be used as a display of competence but a builder can have competence without a ton of experience. Every build is somewhat unique and you need a builder that understands this and understands how to solve a problem. Moreover, you need a builder with financial competence. If they don’t understand their business, they won’t be able to deliver your ADU to you successfully. Financial management and house building are both process oriented endeavors. If you aren’t good at the former, you probably aren’t going to be good at the latter.
Locality You want a builder experienced with the City of Austin. The builder that just parachuted in after working in Houston for 10 years does not know how Austin works. Knowing the city is valuable.
Present While it isn’t necessary for your builder to be on the job site every day, all day, if you walk out in the morning and see your builder in the back yard going over things, it shouldn’t be unusual. The builder should see the project on a near daily basis in person. This ensures that things get done correctly.
Vision Your builder needs to understand what your vision is, what you expect out of the build, etc. This helps them manage the project better and deliver what you are ultimately seeking. If the builder can only follow a plan and can’t actually talk to you and understand what you want at different points, it’s not a good fit. The builder should also be able to make modifications on the fly based on this vision. If the builder is staring out a second floor window and the view is unexpectedly bad and changing the window will make it better, you want him to notice this, call you and say hey, I think this would be better.
Risk
Is your builder willing to take any risk? Are they able to take any risk? Many builders do cost plus contracts. They are taking very little risk in this scenario. In some cases, this is the only viable option. For very high end, multi year custom home builds, owners typically change things during the process. However, for an ADU, the builder should know the product and the costs well enough to provide a fixed price with either allowances for finishes or preconfigured finishes. ADUs are small and you have some regulatory limitations on what you can do so a fixed priced contract should be very doable.
Cost
Be wary of the low, low cost builder. A builder can lower their costs by hiring lower quality and experienced subs, not paying them, not paying them enough, or simply not understanding their costs. At the end of the day, you don’t want this. It will result in an inferior product and or an incomplete product. Highest price isn’t necessarily best but if the people doing the work aren’t professionals, it’s going to look like what it is...an amateur job. An amateur job will affect the livability, rentability and saleability of your ADU. Be professional. If the bid is low because of a lack of understanding of costs, the builder will get jammed at some point and either cut corners or abandon the project, both of which cost you time and money.