What You Do/What We Do

WHAT WE DO:  

To put it in a nutshell, we build the house. As an on your lot builder, we partner with you to build your home, on your lot in Washington state. Everything outside of the actual building of the house is done by someone else besides True Built Home.

Plans and engineering: True Built Home will prepare blueprints and have them engineered for your building site. The costs for doing these are covered by your processing fee, due when you sign the contract. An exception to this would be if you make changes to a stock plan or are drawing up an entirely new plan in which case the designer will have a reasonable redrawing fee.

WHAT YOU DO:

The client is responsible for the following; although we can do some of the items (these are noted):

Permits-either our office administrator or your sales consultant can help you fill out the application for your permit for the home, once your plans and engineering are completed. Some choose to hire a permit specialist, who can run the entire process including completing and submitting the application, acquiring any information the building department may need during the approval process and picking up and delivering the approved permit. In some areas such as King County, this service can be well worth the money you spend.

Excavation and site prep-Grading for a level building pad or steps if the foundation needs to be stepped; clearing trees and large rocks; digging out for the foundation and backfill after the foundation is poured. We can recommend excavators for you; however you solicit bids from excavators and choose one. Make sure you choose an excavator who knows what they’re doing. A sub-standard excavator can be cheaper, but can cost you a lot of money.

Utilities-(power, water, sewer or septic) You are responsible for having them connected and ordering them through the various PUD. Often your excavator will help you with these as well.

Painting-True Built Home can do this, but often clients prefer to do it themselves and save money. If we paint, we will paint Orcas White, and most people want their own colors. So we usually just let you arrange for the painting.

Decks, patios, sidewalks, and garage aprons (out in front of the garage)-Due to the varying degree of sloped topography, the base price of homes do not include any of the aforementioned items. If your home requires a step foundation, you may need to have additional steps from the bomber door-the one that leads to garage from utility room-to your garage slab. Our sales consultants can provide you some subs that can do these things for you, just ask.

Clean-up-Home buyers are solely responsible for keeping the site reasonably tidy and for all post construction clean up.

Landscaping

Erosion Control-often done by your excavator

The concept is designed to save you money. A number of things involved in home building are things that the average homeowner can do themselves. However, most of the time a builder simply does them all. This is a great way for the builder to make money: the builder makes a phone call to hire a painter. The painter paints the house and gives the bill for $2000 to the builder. The builder then charges $3500 for the painting of the home. That was a $1500 phone call! (and for white walls which the homeowner will probably end up painting again anyway). So by allowing the homeowner to either hire a painter or paint the house themselves, the homeowner can save considerable money.

Most of the above services can be arranged by True Built Home, and if it would be more convenient for you, we would be happy to do so. However, in an effort to keep our home costs low, and still offer you a high quality and attractive home, we normally leave these up to you. If you choose to have us arrange these services, we will often subcontract these services out to someone else. By thus allowing you to do it yourself, you save some of the costs that would be involved.