[quote=FormerSanDiegan]Do you live in the same city as you plan to develop ?
If you live in So Cal and are doing ti remotely, forget it.
The only thing remotely close to this that we’ve done is to do a full-scale renovation (and doubling the size) of a single-family home within 5 minutes of where we were living at the time.
Even though I hired a general contractor, at some point I was making ~daily visits to the site. In some cases I found things that were wrong (e.g. – framing of windows in the wrong place). IN other cases I went to see the impact of some things we uncovered along the way (e.g. the need to re-do the one bathroom we intended to keep due to dry rot and water damage) or simply review adjustments that the contractor had to make.[/quote]
Totally agree with this. We didn’t double the size, but did a major renovation plus addition, and we lived just a few houses away. We were making multiple trips daily, sometimes just to make sure that things were moving along, and other times to make corrections and ensure things were being built to our specifications. We had the bathroom that we intended to keep, but had to re-do because of mold and water damage, too. We also tore into a wall and found mold there because the prior owner had done a DIY stucco patch, and never repaired/replaced the vapor barrier…so that whole portion of the stucco (about 10-15 feet) was torn down and redone.
Building from scratch avoids some of these pitfalls, but they have the added burden of bringing in all the utilities, etc. I think this is where a lot of costs can run up.
And ALWAYS add about 20-30% more **at a minimum** to what you’re quoted by the GC. I guarantee this is why so many people go BK when they try to build or do major additions/renovations to an existing home. Things will ALWAYS come up that you weren’t expecting, and they can often be some of the most expensive items in the whole process.
