Yes. It is well known that most builder's contacts protect only the builder. Much better to have your representative review and recommend changes.

Consultation fee: $300.00

Headaches saved down the road: PRICELESS

Yes, of course! And, it should be an attorney experienced in this area of law.

Without question. And also, sit down with you, you take notes, and go section by section through the contract and the attorney explains to you what each section means. You write it down. You ask questions. Before your meeting you make a list of "understandings" you have with your builder about the contract and you have the attorney show you where in the contract they are covered.

You really need to become familiar with your contract. You can do that. Because there will be a number of questions that come up during the build that will be legal ones. It IS the written representation of all the terms of your business arrangement with the builder. Don't wait till an issue comes up to become familiar with what your agreement (contract) says. Only what is written matters.

PLEASE use a lawyer. If you don't you will be posting on here saying, "my builder says X and I say Y and the contract isn't clear, what do we do!"

Make a list of everything the builder has verbally agreed to and make sure it is all covered in the agreement. Go through the contract slowly and carefully. Mark anything you disagree with or that contradicts your verbal agreement. Mark anything that isn't crystal clear to you.

When the contract is complete you should be able to read it and understand it without question. If you don't understand something it isn't clear enough and needs to be redrafted.

My DH has a huge extended family and we have utilized many of their specialties, several of whom are attorneys. Yes, we had them look over the contract, and the architect look over the house plans (adopted his changes) and the engineers come out and look over the site. (That was his dad and his brother). The more eyes you have looking out for you the better.

Amy

We didn't use an attorney to look at our contract BEFORE our build. However, our attorney has spent MANY hours looking at our contract during the last 6 years of disputes. You decide if you need one. And, if you do, make sure it is one familiar with construction law.

I will be building a garage with an apartment above. My father was his own general contractor for two small homes that turned out well. He will be the general contractor for my project.

Anyone have examples of contracts that are used for subs?

I actually had my tax attorney WRITE my contract.

Sadly, he didn't put in any deadlines, or pay for perfomance, or penalties in there.

Now I'm 11 months into a seven month build, with at least 3 to 4 months still to go.

We had an attorney examine our contract.

Two surprises: 1) Our GC is our attorney's favorite "expert witness", and 2) Because we built after a teardown, we never "lost" occupancy, so although our contract said we had to provide final payment when we took occupancy, that phrase was useless for its intended purpose. (We'd set up a 20% final payment, hoping it would be leverage for getting the GC to complete those pesky final jobs.)

YES get a good attorney who's motivated to protect the home BUYER. One clause to remove is the typical builder's arbitration clause. This will negate your right to sue the builder if necessary. While I don't feel suing is an option to undertake lightly, if you don't have the right to, you have virtually zero legal rights or leverage. Arbitrators are known to the builders, so you don't even have a really fair chance to choose a good one if there's a dispute. I had a construction defect case and did NOT have to arbitrate. My right to sue is probably what saved me in the end though it did not have to go to court.

I agree with engaging a lawyer, but know you will have to decide how hard you want to push on changes. Some are more important than others, so depending on your ties to the builder you will need to make some tradeoffs of risk vs contract terms ... keeping in mind you are at the start of a 9-12 mo "relationship". Everyone will draw a different line. If you are truly willing to walk away then you can push harder on issues that in reality you hope won't ever become issues anyway.

One suggestion ... I was able to get my builder to electronically provide his base contract wording to me in MS Word. Electronic version made it much easier for my lawyer to "mark-up" his changes. Once changes were done, I reviewed them with him to understand the reason for each change and the potential risk ... whereby I made the decision to keep or drop them. The lawyer was very helpful to guide me on which ones to "fight" for and which to simply "try for" ... In my case, I got most of my critical points and many of the "try for's", but the arbitration issue is VERY hard to get dropped with most builders in my area. At best I was able to improve the wording and lenghten my warranty coverage.

Does any one have a good builders contract form or template that you could share?

You need to get one that's written with your particular state's law in mind. Beware of the forms written by the local builder's associations. The one in common use where I live is a crime against nature from the owner's perspective.