All Forum Posts by: Dennis O'Dell

@Emilio Ramirez getting the license is definitely happening for the next one. Just trying to capitalize on this opportunity as soon as possible. 

The city won't even let my friend pull his own permit. Even though he is the property owner, the city will only allow self builds when you promise to owner occupy the house, which he doesn't plan to do obviously. 

@Glenn Banks that's actually what I'm planning to do to avoid this situation going forward, but for the time being it would take about 7 weeks after I hopefully pass the test to get my license approved. We'd like to get started sooner than that if possible. 

@Donald Linkous I appreciate the response. I can certainly see your objection to that. Im curious if this kind of arrangement does happen and the legality of it. Our framer frames for two of the bigger builders in town, we have to pass a framing inspection with the city, each mechanical trade has to be independently licensed and has to pass (and schedule) their own inspections, I have COI for each sub, etc. 

Hopefully I can find a GC who sees it as relatively risk free arrangement and will sign on, but I can certainly see your objections

What's the amount of money paid to or level of involvement of a GC when this scenario goes from illegal to legal?  What if the GC were to come walk the property a few times during construction? 

Long time lurker, first time poster.....hoping to get answers on using a GC to pull a permit and do minimal oversight work

Background: I am not a licensed GC, however I recently acted as an owner-builder for my personal house.  Everything went very well with the project. The house has a really nice floor plan that I spent a lot of time drawing with an architect, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Subsequently, an acquaintance asked me to be a project manager for a personal residence he was self-building. That project is wrapping up and has also gone well. At this point I feel decently confident with running small residential projects

Now a friend who owns a lot has contacted me about partnering up and building a spec house on his property. He wants to build an exact replica of the house I just built for myself. The problem is the city where this lot is located requires a licensed general contractor to pull a permit unless you are owner occupying the property. I know exactly how to build this house, how much it will cost, etc since i just built it less than a year ago, and do not want, nor need to pay a GC ~50k to do it and eat into our profits. 

So my question is: has anyone ever entered into an arrangement with a GC where they would be a "paper contractor," let you use their license to pull the permit, and provide very minimal oversight for a small nominal fee, maybe say around $500 or $1000?