How do you build an apartment complex?

[Keith U.]

I'm in the process of building my first apartment complex. We acquired the land, met with the City to get approval on zoning for our goals so now our architect is doing some rough sketches on different configurations. We have some restrictions on how many bedrooms and how many parking spaces.

I would be really interested in hearing from others who have built larger apartment complexes themselves. Specific things like;

- Did you hire an architect and develop the plans or out the gate used your GC's architect?

- How did you find companies to bid on the job?

- If you went with the GC right away and didn't have the job bid by multiple GC's, why?

- How did you structure the bid? Did you have the GC bid on the rough out, then do the GC work yourself on the finish work?

- What was the structure of your GC's bid; did you have GC's bid on whole job, did you do a cost + percentage?

Any other words of wisdom would be highly appreciated and valued. I know with all projects there are lessons learned, so I'm sure there are questions I'm not thinking of.