Building a new home can be a great experience, or more often, your worst nightmare.  If you are the person who is hiring all of the professionals, you may want to consider going with a residential general contractor.  It may cost more money, but in the long run, it will more than likely save you a significant amount of money.

The vast amount of detail that goes with building a home sometimes drives people to abandon their dream early on or stop halfway through.. Like anything else, however, once the components of home contracting are broken down, it starts to look manageable.  That’s where using a residential general contractor becomes an advantage.  They do this for a living.  They understand the amount of time, detail, money, etc… it takes to build a home.  They will take away the majority of your headaches of having to deal with painters, carpenters, electricians, etc….

By using a residential general contractor, you are having that person/company hire the sub-contractors (painters, construction, electricians, etc…) without you having to worry about whether or not the sub contractors are qualified.

When it comes times to hire a residential general contractor, you must take your time.  The best way of obtaining a listing of residential general contractors is from a local building association or Better Business Bureau.  .It is always good measure to look into the residential general contractor you’re going to use prior to hiring them to see if they have claims against them, and so on.  The Better Business Bureau is a great way to check up on a company.

After you have narrowed your search of prospective contractors down, you should ask (a lot of) questions.  Some examples are:  When can you start? How long do you expect the project to take?  What size jobs do you generally handle? Will you be on-site once construction begins? What licenses do you have? Will you obtain all necessary permits? Are you easy to get a hold of?  All of these questions will give you a better understanding of how the company you may choose operates.  This will also help to ensure you can get along with the residential general contractor.

The next, and one of the most important steps to hiring a residential general contractor, is the companies’ references.  Check out at least two or three references for each contractor, and make sure to ask for references from people whose project is related to your own.  Ask detailed questions about how available the contractor was during the project, whether the work was done in a relatively close time frame to what they expected.  Also, how close to the original budget the contractor came; was the site kept clean during the project; were any liens placed on your property by unpaid sub-contractors; and if they would work with that contractor again.  Ask them how easy the contractor was to work with, whether or not they were helpful, cost effective, on time, and so forth.  When you’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, you want to take that extra step to ensure that the residential general contractor you’re hiring is the right person for the job.