The terms ‘Custom’ and ‘Quality’ are overused in the home building industry. It seems like almost every builder out there calls themself a Custom / High Quality company, when in reality there are many different levels of quality. Customers may find this confusing, and it’s often hard to understand the differences unless you really dig in to the specifications for each category of construction.
Early on in my construction career I worked for a Production style builder, then later as I gained experience I became more aware of the problems associated with production building and got to a point where I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I’ve been building Quality homes ever since. What I found is that Production style homes might look ok at first, but they don’t age well. That “Contractor’s Grade” paint job might look OK for the first year, but after 3 years it looks terrible due to weathering, the paint is faded and cracking prematurely. This is just one example where the Production builder saves a few hundred dollars by purchasing cheaper materials, but what I’ve found is that this concept applies to ALL of the categories of construction. The Production builder’s mindset is: by saving a few hundred dollars per category, multiplied by many categories and many homes per year, that adds up to a significant amount of money. By doing this they can offer lower pricing per square foot for construction, but unfortunately the homeowner pays in the long run.
What does this mean for the homeowner? For example, a friend of mine owns a home that was built by a Production builder who decided to save money with roofing materials. Roofing products are typically supposed to last at least 30 years, but after only 10 years his entire roof had to be re-done. During a tough winter there were leaks all over the place, sheetrock damage on the inside of the home, water running inside the walls and warped hardwood floors. It was a real mess that ended up costing ten times what it would have cost to just install the roofing correctly in the first place. The production builder saved maybe $1000, my friend had to pay for an entire new roof. Check out my post on Ice and Water Shield for more information about roofing systems.
This question of what is quality seems to come up all the time. Over the next few months I’ll be writing about the differences in quality between production and custom home building. Broken down by category it’s quite interesting to see what choices are being made by builders. I want my customers to have homes that perform as they should without the long term problems that come back to haunt Production homes. I don’t want warranty issues and product failures coming up years down the road, it’s just bad business to operate that way. Our homes cost a little more, but they are built correctly and will hold up over the long run!