All Forum Posts by: Josh Cuthbertson

Take a look at what? The land? How can any reasonable contractor give you a price without any plans? Plans would be the bid package. You have a plan set done already, right?

If you've never built anything before I wouldn't chance doing an owner build. The amount of questions that will come in to you will completely overwhelm your schedule. Not to mention scheduling subs be on site at the correct times is literally a full time job.

@Zachary Lunden Have you tried any of the bigger firms? Sometimes they have time to squeeze in small projects. Firms like Mithun?

Is there a general plan that specifies architectural style? If not, ask them under what authority they are allowed to make such a requirement. If they can't cite it, they can't enforce it.

If they are simply citing something as general and absurd as "neighborhood character" simply take pictures in the neighborhood of homes using the same material.

Out here permit fees are between 30k - 40k for a new residence. Just the fee's! Ouch. Then the hard costs of the house are upwards of $150 per sf.

@Brian Garrett Sorry about that, I should have said something more. The answer is, it depends.

I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's deal specific, and depends on whether or not you want a smaller margin cash-flow, or try for a larger and maybe quicker return. Not to mention that anticipating appreciation in the model is basically educated gambling. Speaking from what my model showed us, it was better to look at investing in one spec home with the larger single investment rather than dealing with a bunch of properties.

@Brian Garrett I ask this question in my head all the time. I finally bit the bullet and hired a CFP to run reports for me to look at each scenario. It's not cheap, but it helps me look at the bigger picture.

@Ashish Brar I have some spec builds up in Redding looking for investment. Still far from you, but hey, it's CA still right? ;)

I'm no attorney, but couldn't you also put in a mitigation clause to enforce the terms as well? Might be a way to prevent it from going all the way to court?

@Branden Smith Same thing up here Branden. Only 3 hours north of you, and entire subdivisions are being sold, house by house, before the slab is even down. When that stops and those sit, I'll reconsider what I'm trying to do. Craziest part about Redding though is rents will remain high, even during a downturn. Mega churches w/ colleges attached will do that. ;)

Hi Ciera, welcome and good luck on this exciting adventure. BP is an excellent resource and I imagine you'll get a lot of great ideas. Can we see some of the properties you're talking about?

The firm that created the subdivision doesn't do this? I'd be pretty upset about that. I would go back to them and ask what they do to present this for the investor.