"marson" wrote in message
ps.com...
On Mar 22, 8:08 pm, "Alex" wrote:
Hi Everyone,

This question has probably been asked a zillion times before, but I
thought I'd ask since the market is always changing. We're looking at
possibly building a house in a few years, and we're thinking of first
finding an acre or two someplace and buying it now with the hope of
paying it off rather quickly (3-4 years) then starting construction of
a house afterwards. My question is that if we spend those years
researching the in's and out's of building a house, talk to local
folks, etc, would it be possible for us to basically build the house
without a general contractor?

I honestly don't know alot beyond general house repairs and
construction, plus what I've read in Handyman Magazine and seen on
television, but I'd like to think if I spent the time it'll take to
pay off/down the properly I can self-educate myself to contract the
house myself and save some money... plus possibly get involved in
building the house to some degree to cut corners.

Is this common to do or maybe majorly not suggested?

Thanks for any suggestions or ideas in this re guard, and take care --

Alex

Well, other people have done it with varying degrees of success, so
yes, it can be done. Is it worth it? Only you know that. Prepare for
a lot of stress and a lot of work. You probably won't save as much
money as you think, and it will be more work than you think.

Don't think that you can learn what a GC needs to know by studying for
a few years. Being a contractor really takes more knowledge and
experience than most people realize. Unfortunately, the only decent
school I know of is called the school of hard knocks. A good
contractor knows a good bit about pretty much every trade.

The only thing I'd add is that in most places it does not take any
demonstration of these hard knocks in order to ***call*** oneself a GC. So
there are scenarios where a novice owner-builder could be not that much more
incompetent that someone who calls himself a GC.

To the OP, see link:

http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/foolsrushinw.html


--


MichaelB
www.michaelbulatovich.ca