Whn you talk to potential builders, ask them. Then add 20% to 50% to whatever they tell you.

We were told six months, maybe five. It took 5 months to get a permit and 11 months after we got the permit until we moved in.

I would not want to start a build near Wilmington in the fall because it is the height of hurricane season. Which means, the most likely time for your start to get rained out. December through May is a better time.

Your land has been purchased, I guess, the reason you don't want to wait any longer? (Other than just being excited about getting started.) It seems like to avoid the commute, you might wait to get started till you're, say, 12 months away from his retirement. Then he'll probably be retired in time to help with all the busy stuff toward the end of the build plus selling your existing house. Just my thinking.

So much depends on whether the area is in a building boom while you are building (availability of subs, etc.) From your details I'd want to say a year if it were straight custom on land in the country but if the builders have their own crews and other projects going in the same development it will likely be less; I'd ask the builders for their time estimate and then add at least half again. Basically if you are in a huge hurry and need to get in the house, it will take them twice as long....if you are patient and have allowed plenty of time (not sold your old house, etc.) it will be finished in record time. :~D

we started in Sept 06. Builder said it would be done in no more than 9 months. I am sending you this email from my rental - arggg!!! Maybe we will be in by Oct of this year. Arggg!!!

Tell your builder you need it done in 9 months. Then set your expectation to 12 months from the day they start digging the foundation. If you press him on the 9 months - then you should be in within 12. If you tell him 12 - then it will be 15 (get the idea - listen to granny!)

Given that - you also need to factor in time to get permits and prep the lot (I don't know what your lot looks like). It took us 4 weeks to get our permit and another 4 weeks to clear the lot (we have a lot of trees).

So you need to back up 12 months from your expected move in date and then back up another 4 to 8 weeks from that. This is when you should be "starting" - contract signed and builder starts working the permits.

Now - you might even have to back up further than that for the "start" if you need a site plan. If you live in a protected area - or a flood plain - the county may require a site plan (which incluides your septic design if you are not on public utilities). In my situation - I needed the site plan before I could get the building permit. We started that process in Jan of 2006.

As far as the time of year to start - it really doesn't matter. There are great excuses for delays no matter what the season is.

We were told 11mths by our builder and finished in 9mths. :) On budget. :D Almost 6Ksf, not counting 3 car garage or 3 large verandas. Plumber was a bit slow, but didn't hold us up. Kitchen guy was another story - we lived with no hot water for four or five days but everything worked. Only had workmen in the house one day afterwards (painters touching up and kitchen guy's painter) then the faux finisher for the kitchen cabinets twice. Not all day things, other than the day after moving.

It's not always longer than expected. Good luck!

Alison is the lucky one!

Usually it will take longer than whatever you had planned! I can't see a custom house being less than 6 months, but I can easily see it stretching to 15+ months. A custom plan means that all subs and your GC are doing something for the first time...slower going than building in a subdivision with stock plans from which to choose.

In my experience the things that can stretch it out are:
- lots of site work
- changes - if you stick with your plan things will go quicker
- good reliable subs who have a great relationship with builder
- great builder who is scheduling the subs in
- lots of trim details
- lots of paint colors

We have a similar sized house and in the end we broke ground @ end of November and moved in @ beginning of August. There was another month of work on finishing and landscaping after that.

I've seen the entire gamut on this forum from my 38 month build to other's who have done similar size homes in less than a year. Here's just a small list of what can happen to prolong a build....
Architect...is he computerized and does he "know" his codes? Does he listen so you make less changes once the build begins? Our's left out snow load trusses which completely stopped our build for 3 months and threatened to almost stop it completely.
Permits and engineering....Does your area require permitting and how good--fast--helpful that department is (ours took 9 months and was horrible to work with).
Weather....it can play a huge part. We were delayed 3 full months right after footings but before concrete was poured because of rains that would not stop!.
Your choice of contractor....best thing to say about most is they have golden tongues. Will he use quality subs or will you be chasing them to get them to do their jobs fast and correct the first time.
Your contract...how it is written and whether you have recourse if your GC runs over your timeline.

IMHO... in a perfect world it shouldn't take more than a year and a half..... Good luck and believe it or not, have fun!

Although most of our drawings so far have been hand drawn our architect IS computerized and will be putting our final design on Autocad. He will be running it by a structural engineer before it is submitted for bidding.

Not sure how long getting the permit will take, but I know we are the responsible party for getting it.

I understand that both these builders are recommended very highly by our gated community and both of them are highly respected by the residents and staff there. I did meet some residents who gave us confidence in their abilities. Each of them has built a number of custom homes in this same community. I plan on interviewing some of their recommended homeowners prior to my final selection decision.

I have one GC in mind, as I preferred his personality over the other ones, but both of them were very professional. Since they both have their own subs who are local I am assume that they will be responsible for their work.

Apparently, a good deal of the individuals who have had these GCs build their homes were long distance builds.

I want to move down there before September next year due to my line of work (I am in the teaching profession) thus that is why I also wished to start the build then. So building or not in September, I may still have to move down there. I also want to be down there while we are building. I had forgotten about the hurricane season, though. But will ask each builder when they would be able to start and when they felt it would be best to start. I do know that they have been building less homes than in prior years due to the downturn in home sales. Both of them had said they had built too many in a year and they are trying to stay with 8-10 homes each year now.

Our current home will be going on the market next spring. If and when we sell our current home we will both be moving down there in a rental. I prefer not to deal with 2 homes at once. DH can work from home most of the time, but would have to travel back here occasionally. He also travels a lot in his job so it really doesn't matter (as much as he thinks it does) where he lives. Also, he is already starting to slow down in his work load and plans on doing less at his job over the next few years. (That probably only means he will be putting in a normal day's work now instead of the usual 10-12 hrs...LOL)

I was told there are rentals (smaller homes) sometimes available in the actual development. If one is available then we would be within walking distance to our home site.

I was thinking about a year from start to finish, but as you say anything can (and probably will) slow us down.

As mentioned above, weather can be a very decisive factor.

In the Toronto area, I take from 6-8.5 months from the time the backhoe hits the ground till the owners take possession. This excludes all the time necessary for plans and permits. My most recent build was 8 mos., plus two weeks of odds 'n ends after the owners moved in--they had no choice and overstayed their lease as it was.

If they hadn't run into financing problems at the drywall stage, I would have hit my six-month target. C'est la vie.

How long does it take to build a custom home? How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?

A shorter answer than most, but equally as accurate. Good luck with your build;-)

Amy

We were told 5 months. September 13 will be 5 months. We are no were near being done. GC told us we are looking at another 3-4 months . BUT...we were delayed almost 3 months by rain! Now we are waiting for the electric sub. He was suppose to be there this week but did not show up. *sigh* I am going to start a pool within our family on who can guess the closet date to move in! Should be fun :-)

Our house took 5 1/2 months from groundbreaking to move-in. But I don't really consider ours to be a true custom home. It definitely doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of some of the beautiful homes I've seen on this site that took a whole lot longer (years) to build.

It did seem like there was always something going on at our site. Very rarely was there any down time. We never went weeks without progress.

Our story is similar to Sniffdog's above. The build began in September '06; builder said it would take 7 months, so we contracted for "not longer than 9 months." I'm still holding on to the hope of moving in before the end of this month, but everyone tells me it's not realistic at this point. In sum, for our 2800 sq ft, fully custom build, we're looking at approximately 13 months.

I've seen a friend move into a Del Webb community in four months from groundbreaking, but there the same crew builds the same house over and over with only minor changes.

Our 2900 sq ft (HVAC-ed space) custom teardown/build took nince months, but we moved in knowing some finishing would be taking longer. So, I'd say it was really ten months. (We couldn't bear to live in temp housing a day longer!)

You do need to be THERE during the build. Sounds ideal if you could be walking distance! So...I wouldn't start until 12 months ahead of the time your DH retires.

Living in temp housing can be H*ll. We sold our old home to a couple willing to wait several months for possession. Then the City for our new build threw up all sorts of nonsense barriers (AFTER issuing teardown and building permits!) and we ended up in a furnished rental for months longer than we'd planned.

I can't endorse long-distance builds or long-distance marriages.

We were told around 7 months, but ours took around a year and a half to build from having the plans drawn up to move-in. We had decent weather, but the subs took forever to do anything.

Funny you should ask. We are building an old/new farmhouse. Granted it's only 1900 sq ft for the first phase (dang man-land is almost the same size) but hey, at least we got the land! :) Anyway, I spoke to the builder & told him "John, I just watched Extreme Home Makeover where they built this huge house in 52 hours!! I think we can build this in 48!! What do you think?" There was a pause then he said "Okay, 10 weeks". I said, "What? Are you kidding me?" He said "Okay, Kimberly for you we can do it in 8". Now I was KIDDING!!! Dang!! However he's told me this 3 times already....so we are going to start building here in at the end of month. We'll see how far my engineer turned home builder gets in 8 weeks. Please note this is only to the drywall stage. Hubby builds custom cabinets & relatives come in for other trades like flooring & tile.
Should be interesting!
KAT

We signed papers in late November '06 and then the rains began. We poured concrete in mid-January '07 and moved in August 7. Greatly depends on weather. We would have been done in 6 months if not for rain. And we were GCs.

we built a 3,600 square foot house with 400 feet of unfinished bonus space and a 2,400 square foot unfinished basement.

our builder told us 4-5 months.

it took a week short of eight months.

it really depends on when you start building. I believe that starting in summer would be better than fall because you want to get the house dried in before wet winter weather starts. we broke ground in august ourselves.

As others have pointed out, this is the sort of question that it really depends on who you ask. The answer has caused more than a little friction in my house, that's for sure.

We're GCing ourselves, with my father-in-law acting as a co-GC, because he's been in construction since The Dawn Of Time (TM) and knows who to call for stuff. He also does outstanding concrete flatwork. *My* dad is the architect. My brother-in-law is the electrician. So far, so good.

We broke ground August 19 of last year, as I recall. Our foundation was poured one year ago today (I remember because my son and I wrote the date in the wet concrete). We were dried in by the end of October. Then came a rather cold, rather snowy Nebraska winter, which has a way of slowing things down.

As of today, we're still a couple weeks out - by the time it's all done, we'll be 13 months start to finish.

What's slowed us down, besides weather (that cold winter was followed by a very wet spring) has been things like waiting 2.5 weeks for the framer that we (read: my FIL) wanted; having a stick-framed instead of trussed roof; and having to be at the bottom of most of our subs' list, as a lot of them work for builders who get first call on their to-do lists (trim carpentry was a big problem - it took about 2 months to get that done).

The best part has been that people - chief among them my mother-in-law - have been riding our butts about how long it's taken, completely ignoring that: 1)We're doing a LOT of stuff ourselves; and 2)The schedule that she thinks homes should be completed is that of a production builder - 6-7 months.

Oh, and we've been *living* with the in-laws since June 1 - I did a bit too good a job of marketing our old house and managed to sell it in nine days; even with a 45-day close, we still have spent the entire summer living w/ Grandma & Grandpa.

I need a beer.

Jason

Jason: You made me laugh! Enjoy your beer

DH has been clearing our lot (weekends only) since the end of Feb. '06. We are being very picky about saving as many trees as possible. The Well has been installed, house has been staked out, driveway cut in, all permits are in place (only 2 building permits issued per month ). Digging for the foundation begins this weekend. We don't have a dealine set as to not suffer too much disappointment when we pass the date. If you ask DH his answer is sometime in '08. By the way, we are GCing ourselves.

We were told 8 mos. We broke ground in December and aren't expected to move in until November.

We broke ground in October of 2006 and the GC said 11-12 months and he's right on schedule. Hoping to be in by Halloween.

The issues have been raised by others....weather is a factor, location, size of home, etc.... Also...I'd add 10-20% on top of the GC's price. You'll go over on some allowances and he'll have some things come up that no one counted on (ours was excavation costs and tree removal).

We signed a rental agreement beginning Sept. 1 and ending April 30. That is how long it took to build our house, which is about 4000 sq feet. Our builder had already pulled all the permits and made sure we would be in by April 30. And we were. This was in Upstate NY where the weather can be dreadful.

Jo

our builder says 10 months. architect laughed and predicted more like 18 months. meanwhile i'm still waiting on engineering report, final draw, bids, municipal approval/permits. everything is held up waiting on one person... i don't expect it will get easier. i just want some action already! house is (as of today) 6800 sq ft. hoping for a warm and mild winter.