Consulting

Imagine buying a home that needs a wheelchair-accessible addition for an aging loved one. Or you fell in love with a 1920s house that needs a new kitchen, master suite, bathrooms, garage, wiring, septic system, and roof.

In both scenarios, before you buy the house, you’ll want to confirm that any plans for postpurchase renovations are feasible and that you have the budget and time to complete the work. That’s where our pre-buy consultation with us comes in. We are professional design-build remodelers with decades of renovation and remodeling experience, and we’re well-versed in residential property investing. We can tell you what to expect with these kinds of projects, including the amount of work involved, the approximate cost, and the estimated time frame. We do this by evaluating:

• The scope of your overall renovation needs
• Comps, features, and benefits of other homes in your area
• Other factors affecting local property values

Then, we’ll provide you with an assessment* that helps you make great decisions for the long-term enjoyment of and investment in your home.

No. While home inspections and pre-buy consultations are valuable parts of your purchase planning, they serve different purposes. A home inspection is a snapshot of the home’s current conditions and physical and safety defects. It is performed to protect the mortgage company’s and your investment for the property and provides a look at conditions that may need to be addressed.

This is valuable, and we recommend that our clients include getting a home inspection as a piece of their purchase planning. However, remember that the home inspector is not a general contractor. While they may offer repair estimates based on their database, they often don’t reflect big-picture solutions or real-market prices.

Your realtor wants to sell you a home and close the deal as efficiently as possible. This is the extent of their service to you as a homebuyer. They are not advisors on the costs and benefits of home renovation projects.

If you were buying a used car, you would have your mechanic look at it to evaluate its condition and whether it is a good car for you to invest in. Your home purchase is no different. While a used car might cost as little as a few thousand dollars, an average local house will cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is common for houses locally to exceed a million dollars or more. If you’re like most people, your home will be your largest lifetime investment, and you’ll live there for a decade or longer. Making a modest investment in a pre-buy consultation will be a far easier and less expensive commitment than purchasing a home that isn’t a financially viable or useful fit for you. Call us for help today!

*Disclaimer: Our pre-buy consultation provides a general estimate of the time and tools needed for purchase planning. A firm estimate can only be made after a project is fully designed and specified. If you end up purchasing your house, we welcome the chance to work with you under our pre-construction design build planning system to envision and price the specific renovations that will make your new house your home.

Every one of our design-to-build projects includes a PDA consultation.

During this phase, several iterative project ideas are put to paper and tested because testing on paper involves less time, resources, and risk than “winging it” during construction. Decisions are made, details are documented, and the project plan starts to develop.

A PDA consultation typically requires several meetings over several weeks — or several months for our largest and most complex projects. While it can go faster, most clients prefer to take more time for large-scale decisions. We schedule all the PDA meetings at once so everyone on the decision-making and planning teams knows where they need to be in subsequent weeks to keep the plans moving along smoothly. Typically, this happens after an initial new client meeting, but sometimes, clients will call for this consultative phase even before closing on their property purchase.

While some PDAs can happen between just the property owners and our sales team, many projects require that we bring a team of professionals, including architects, engineers, interior designers, landscapers, lighting and mechanical specialists, and other pros.

Once decisions and selections are made, we can load all associated prices into our proprietary Construction Specifications Institute (CSI)-formatted pricing specifications spreadsheet. This helps us track all details to see how the budget and schedule are shaping up. Our PDA system is designed to be rolled into a Myers Constructs construction contract to ensure that clear pricing, specifications, and selections inform the construction drawings and all project phases, from planning and site work through masonry, framing, insulation, roofing, finishes, and trim out at the end.

If you would like to learn more about our Project Development Agreements and how they can help your next project, please contact us.