ᐅ When did you sign the construction contract? Was there any prior planning?

Our current situation: We are waiting for the approval of a building preliminary inquiry and, if the response is positive, we would purchase a plot of land soon after.

This process has been taking longer due to several reasons, and we have used the time to gather information and plan the house as much as possible without having bought the land yet.

Initially, after some online research, we were interested in three general contractors (GCs).

With one of them, even receiving a catalog took forever, scheduling a suitable appointment was difficult, and they didn’t consider prior information about the plot important. That gave us an immediate bad feeling, so we didn’t pursue it further or look deeper into their home portfolio.

With another, we had two conversations, but overall, we felt like they were trying to push us too much toward a specific building style that didn’t fit our budget. We liked their basic house offerings, but not the consultant 🙂

With the third provider, we have been extremely satisfied so far. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to name them here—I don’t want to engage in covert advertising—but they were the only ones willing to have a meeting at our home (due to the baby and everything), who viewed the plot onsite beforehand, who gave us thorough but unobtrusive advice via email, who accompanied us with a groundworks contractor to the plot, and who arranged visits to customer reference homes, among other things. Of course, one might say that such service is standard in project development, but apparently, the other GCs don’t see it that way, and so far, we are only interested parties, not customers.

And that brings me to my point: although we feel confident from an intuitive perspective that we want to build with this provider, since they offer two house models that appeal to us, the consultation has been good, and we couldn’t really find any negative experiences with them online—and the price seems reasonable—we aren’t sure if it’s wise to focus exclusively on one provider for such a big decision. I must admit, we have no real knowledge about building materials and comparing providers’ construction quality in an informed way is very difficult for us as laypeople. Regarding price, we think a good house has its cost, and a quote that’s, say, €30,000 cheaper might not really be cheaper if it comes with poorer quality. Still, people usually say not to go with the first option... hmm. How many providers did you research, and how many did you talk to? From our gut feeling, there’s nothing against our favored provider as far as we can judge, but they are a larger company, and that’s certainly not a “mistake.” Still, I’m a little uncertain now because we simply don’t “know” any other providers.

Regarding the planning, we now have two floor plans that we like, and we know quite precisely what changes we would want to make. The next step would be very detailed planning, including discussions with the architects and getting an exact price quote with the planned modifications, etc. But we are still interested parties, not clients—we haven’t signed anything. Nobody pressured us to sign, not a single word. But I find it “awkward” to have them plan everything in detail and then maybe decide later to go elsewhere? A freelance architect wouldn’t work that way either, right? On the other hand, if we blindly sign a building contract now, committing to building with them before finalizing details, we might put ourselves in a weaker negotiating position as customers. How did this work out for you?