Junkbj,

It appears that you are getting a turnkey price from a builder.

Most builders will quote a project based on a certain number of $ per sq ft based on their experience and the current material pricing.

They simply don't do a detailed take-off of the house because they don't have time to do it.

If you think about it, a lot of people "toy" around with the idea of building a house and start making phone calls to builders to get prices. If the builder was giving detailed quotes to everyone that called, he would not be making any money.

He knows what his cost is and he knows what he can build the house for and make a profit...so to save time, most builders will just give you a cost per sq ft or a lump sum like you got.

Here's what I would do...

Call the builder that you would like to have build your house. Talk to him and tell him that you want to use him but his price is a little out of your budget.

Ask him if he can give you some suggestions as to how you can reduce the price so you are within your budget. You need to make a decision as to what you are willing to give up, what is important to you and what is not.

What my wife and I did was to decide what would be easy to upgrade later and what would not. We also decided to go with a little less expensive can light fixtures since they will not be seen anyway. These are just a few examples of what we did.

I am building a house right now. We are getting ready to do sheetrock starting next Thursday.

I am a contractor but I do industrial construction at manufacturing companies so this is a new experience for me as well.

It sounds like you are fairly knowledgeable...why are not considering being the general contractor yourself and saving the mark up?

Its all a matter of getting some subcontractors and then managing them. If you'd like I can give you some tips on finding subs if you want to go this direction.

Hope my thoughts helped you. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Bret

Ditto what mundster said....

Also, alot of expenses are after the house is built(after sheetrock) but before the trim out inside the house...Ex. amount of trim work(crown, base moulding, ect) kitchen, all baths, all flooring, lighting....etc. These items can make a HUGE difference.

Thanks Bret, I'll give him a call tho I'll probably wait till my other two bids come in and see if any of them are more detailed as I had asked.

As for being my own GC, thanks but no thanks. I work about 60 hrs per week (thankfully at a job I love) so don't have the time/energy for that. Just the process of finding a GC has just about done me in! If I had to do it over and over to find a foundation contractor and a plumbing contractor and a framing contractor and a flooring contractor and a painting contractor and...... I wouldn't need to build a house b/c I'd quickly be living somewhere with padded walls! LOL!

A full breakdown of a competitive bid is extremely rare but separating it in to categories like allowances, special phases, etc would be appropriate.

A full breakdown would allow a homeowner to make comparisons between the prices of subs and possibly even try to get a GC's low subs to work for another GC or directly for the owner. Therefore, it is highly irregular to ask for a full breakdown. If it is a fixed price contract bid, how the GC arrived at the fixed price is really none of your business although he does owe you a detailed description of any work that might be different from or in addition to the work shown in your design documents.

What you might be thinking of is a negotiated contract. In such a situation it would be a breach of faith to negotiate with more than one GC or to contact another GC without terminating the negotiation with the first GC.

I'm with mighty.

Remember if you are using a GC, which is what we did, GC has people he likes to use. I didn't ask for a detailed breakdown because the original bids were standing in effect for more than 6 months. In other words all bids were in and the subs selected before we dug.
They were fixed price and they held the price even though diesel shot up 1.00 a gallon and metal was going through the sky. The florida hurricane had osb prices doubled. These subs were scraping to hit their bid.
IMHO, everybody was happier with a fixed price. I did not want unhappy people building my dream house.

Pay attention to the Scope of work.

Peace

Another way to get a detailed price is to hire a contractor as a consultant to produce a detailed budget and then either hire him for the work or bid the project competitively.

Whatever you do, a contractor will expect some reasonable consideration in return for showing you his work.

Hmmm. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but we got three bids from three different builders and each of them had a fairly detailed breakdown of the numbers to arrive at the bottom line. I think there were approximately 70 line items. Some were large (like lumber and framing) and some where small (like backfill and silt fence). I didn't have the breakdown for each line item, but for those that I was interested in, like the hardwoods, tile, carpet, counters, shower doors, plumbing fixtures, etc, I was able to get the detailed bid from the GC (once we had started the project). I used these numbers to understand where our money was going and to make concessions and adjustments so that the final project comes in at a price that we are comfortable with. I guess I would also qualify this by saying we are building a cost plus contract with a fixed contractor's fee which was determined as a percentage of the initial bid but will not go up or down as we make adjustments to the specifications. I'm not sure if this is uncommon because it was just the way our three bids came back but I know that if I were serious about building a house with a particular GC, I would want that sort of information so I could understand where my money was going and make sure everything had been captured. If this is uncommon, I guess we were just extremely lucky.

We had a similiar experience to jaymielo. We are also cost plus and negociated a similiar fixed fee with the contractor based off the initial estimate. We obtained three bids also and what I found extremely helpful was to segregate the cost to construct the box from the finishes. I had control over the finishes, but little control over the construction of the box. It also put the bids on more of an even playing field as the allowances for plumbing, lighting, flooring, etc. varied by builder.

After we selected a GC, we still requested additional bids in certain areas where subs seemed high (ie. masonry, stairs) and the results were well worth it.

mightyanvil,

That could very well be the case. It wasn't clear to me, from the OP, what type of bid they were soliciting. A fixed price contract would be different than brmjandme and my experience.

Jaymie