Part 1: Researching your Custom Builder Options

The decision is made. You’re researching your local custom builder options in the Lake Keowee area. You’ve probably looked through dozens of home decorating magazines, browsed the internet, and made numerous lists of all the features you want to include in your home design. While these steps are necessary (and fun!), the process of choosing the right builder can be daunting. The smartest thing you can do is research your options. Make a list of the home builder qualities that are important to you and narrow your choices down to a handful of builders that you feel have the experience to build your dream home.

In part one of this series, Researching your Custom Builder Options, our goal is to guide you through the process of choosing the right partner. Selecting a custom home builder is one of the most important decisions you will make at the beginning of your journey. Select the right one and you will build a strong relationship and develop an honest partnership. The right builder will offer total transparency throughout the building process and ultimately, you’ll dodge a construction horror story. Choose well and you’ll end up with a high-quality lake home that you and your family will enjoy for years to come.

When to choose your builder

The best time to choose your builder is before you begin to search for the lake lot on which you want to build your home. Engage with a builder who has licensed real estate agents on staff, who are intimately familiar with the area, and are experienced with the ins and outs of building homes on Lake Keowee. If you’ve already chosen or purchased your land, that’s ok, too. A good builder will walk you through the process of evaluating the property and offer educated options that best suit your vision. Bringing a builder on board early in the process ensures that your desired design and your budget stay aligned throughout the build.

Starting your search for home builder options

In South Carolina, the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulations is responsible for the licensing of all contractors. General, mechanical, specialty, and manufactured housing contractors must be licensed through the state of South Carolina to work in the state. When researching your custom builder options, be sure to verify if the builders you choose to research are properly licensed. It’s also important to make sure that your builder’s subcontractors also have the appropriate qualifications and licensing, so be sure to ask your builder for confirmation.

A good place to start in your research is by talking to family, neighbors, co-workers, friends, and especially real estate professionals that can offer positive custom home builder referrals. Someone in your circle may have direct experience with a local builder. Through your conversations, you may even uncover a list of builders with questionable reputations. Knowing who to avoid is obviously valuable information.

Don’t limit your research to just the people you know; go online and search for builders in the area. Take note of their online reputations: read reviews, look for recommendations, and pay attention to complaints. While not everyone can keep a perfect reputation score online, most of the reviews of the builders you’re considering should be positive.

Interview your top choices

Once you’ve done your due diligence and you’ve selected the top two to three choices from your home builder options, ask to schedule a meeting, either in person or through video conference if you’re from out of town. Be sure to have a list of questions handy and take notes. This may be the most time-consuming part of your selection process, but it’s also the most important. If you’re from out of town and plan to be in the area, request to visit a completed home or current job site with the builder. You may also want to ask for references of the builders from current or past clients.

Interviewing your home builder options will give you the chance to judge the following:

• Transparency in the home building process
• The experience of the builder and their preferred subcontractors
• Communication quality of the builder and their core team

Visiting a current job site will allow you to assess:

• If the builder’s team has first-hand knowledge of the project and its progress
• The quality of the planning and construction of their builds
• Jobsite cleanliness and safety measures

When you first meet with the team at Total Quality Home Builders, our goal is to help you evaluate if we’re the right custom builder option for your project. We go to great lengths during the initial work we do to provide you with a completely transparent plan from the start and that there are no surprises throughout the construction process.

During our initial meeting, we’ll provide you with documentation of our current projects, including budgets and plans, to give you a clear understanding of how we work, what’s included in the budget, and a typical timeline for custom construction. We’ll also provide you with our portfolio of completed homes and a list of current and past clients, which you’re free to call to evaluate their satisfaction. Our goal is to help you feel confident with Total Quality Home Builders as your custom home builder option. From this point, the process for building your home becomes clear. We’ll establish your budget, create a Good Faith Estimate, and then the fun work begins.

Coming up in part two of this series, Find a Waterfront Homesite, we’ll explore the reasons why it’s important to enlist your builder’s help to find a lot to purchase, and how we use your vision to locate the best waterfront property for your custom-built home on Lake Keowee.