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Reply to: Are you living in the house at this time? The landscaping says there's lots of regular maintenance and most prospects aren't looking for that. I think painting the exterior is really important, and before you do that, please remove the colonial style pediment over the door and the louvered shutters. They are not appropriate for your home's style. The broken looking pavers in front of the steps will require immediate attention by the new owners. Can you take that chore off their list? Another discouraging chore would be removal of the three shrubs on the left. While you're at it, a larger and upgraded light above the door would add a lot. How about a house number that can be seen from the road? Inside, ALL the window treatments need to go. In bathrooms, replace with simple white shades. Multiple chests of drawers in some bedrooms say "There's not enough storage in this house." One per room would be OK, unless some rooms have two occupants. Maybe hiding a chest in a closet would be an option. Is that a chest freezer in the bedroom that has a daybed? If so, move it to the garage if you can. I see computer stations in most of the bedrooms. That is not a selling point. If these are kids bedrooms, try doubling up a couple of kids and putting all the computers in an "office" made from the smallest bedroom. The rugs are chopping up the floor space. To make a larger, more expansive impression, remove them everywhere but the living room and master (at least for showings and photos.) Draw interest in one bedroom as the master. I assume it is the one with the wall to wall closet. If so, remove the additional storage pieces, center the bed on the wall and perhaps use the rug from the bedroom with the window AC under the master bed like shown below. Throughout the house, take down all the items hung on the walls. They are hung to high and are not the quality you want for a staged presentation. I could go on, but I won't. Basically, minimize furniture, expose the floors to give a more spacious impression, clear the walls and windows and put some $$$ into the exteriors presentation (5 minutes is all you have to get them interested in or discouraged about your property.)

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Reply to: Absolutely we made changes all the way along. But we were a cost plus contact no allowances. We paid the bills plus the builder fee on top. All spelled out in advance and clear. No surprises on that front. We purchased some things ourselves that didn’t need a warranty per say so had no mark up on those. Bathroom vanities and some fixtures

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Reply to: Terry how far into the project are you? How committed? We built a custom home and could have ordered whatever we wanted from wherever we wanted for finishes. We had an interior designer who created the spec book for us but we often swapped things out and brought our own ideas to the table. In the end everything we put in was agreed to by us and the designer and the builder.

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Reply to: I'm doing a major renovation with a new addition. I've told the builder (before the bid) that I will be purchasing all appliances, sinks, tile, faucets, fixtures, etc. and he will be bidding on the installation of said items. I always have all items in my garage awaiting his installation.

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Reply to: Not sure that this will help Terry......but -- we did a fully custom build 4 years ago. We owned the land, used our own architect and interviewed builders. While our builder did have some recommended suppliers where we could take advantage of his discounts (some of which we did use) -- we were not obligated to use them. A prime example of this was cabinetry. We were not going to use his "cabinet guy" and we worked with an independent kitchen and bath designer for all the cabinetry in the house. Our builder was fine with it, as long as we managed the process, had the kitchen designer's installation crew do the installation and didn't hold up the schedule. All of which we were in agreement with. The plumber preferred we get our plumbing fixtures from a reputable plumbing supply house as opposed to on-line or a big box store, but we had planned to do that anyway. All in all, our builder and his subs were very accommodating in working with us. And we did make sure that we asked those kinds of questions up front when interviewing builders. Where we didn't have a choice was in the subs he used. 4 years later and I'm still annoyed at the paint job done in a couple of areas, but all in all -- the rest of the subs were excellent. Having said all that -- we fully understood that if we chose a vendor not recommended by our builder, we owned any schedule delays or problem resolution that might have occurred.

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