"Visit any bookstore and you'll discover dozens of
"do-it-yourself" house books. These books
passionately try to convince you that building a new
house yourself will be the most-rewarding, least-expensive
method of getting a new home. Pound the nails yourself and you
could save that fat 15% profit the builder is charging.
Add to this the large number of do-it-yourself home centers
that have sprung up across the country and the home-building
shows on TV-the mantra of do-it-yourself building is
mind-numbing. However, there are many aspects of doing
it yourself that get scant attention from doing it yourself books.
Slick salespeople and TV hosts don't always reveal potential
problems for the do-it-yourselfer.
For example, you can't build most houses in this country
without a building permit, obtained from a local
building department. Many building departments will only issue
permits to licensed contractors. Do-it-yourselfers don't
count.
Lenders also are often unwilling to lend money to an
unlicensed contractor. One aspiring do-it-yourselfer
wrote to syndicated columnist Robert Burs about this problem.
"I can't find a bank which will make a construction loan
to a do-it-yourself contractor such as myself," the
home buyer said, adding that the bank gave as its reason that
virtually their only foreclosures on construction loans have
involved do-it-yourselfers. And, can you blame the
lenders? Would you lend $100,000 or $200,000 to someone
who's never built a home before?
Along with the technical and financial difficulties of
building your own home, there is another big roadblock: time.
Do you know how much time it takes to build a home? To
get bids from sub-contractors? To schedule workers and
deliveries of materials? Building a home is a full time
job and the average house can take anywhere from three to six
months to construct. If you have another full-time job
and expect to work on the home on the weekends, your home
building project could last a year or more.
Among the biggest risks of doing it yourself is Murphy's Law
of Home Building: whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
You are on the hook if a problem with the home's construction
occurs. By contrast, if you hire a professional builder
to construct your house and an unforeseen problem occurs, it
is the builder's responsibility to solve the problem.
With few exceptions (soil problems, to name one), the cost
will be absorbed by the builder (if they are working on a
fixed-price basis). And builder's get contractor's
discounts which the do-it-yourselfer may not be able to
qualify for.
Finally, the best sub-contractors like to work for
professional builders, not do-it-yourselfers. The
prospect for repeat work motivates the subs to do the best job
possible. When you're building a home by yourself, the
electrician, plumber and roofer all know they will
probably never see you again.
As book authors we may be blasphemers to say this, but
we believe no book can teach you how to be an expert plumber
or electrician. It takes years of experience to be a
good builder-you can't just substitute a 250 page book or a
2-hour video tape for this level of expertise. While
building a home may not look that complicated, you also have
to navigate a minefield of regulation, building code
requirements and other laws. The bottom line:
leave the work to the professionals."
This Homebuyers Tip was excerpted from:
Your New House, by Alan and Denise Fields, Windsor Peak Press,
1994.
ISBN# 0962655627
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