Hiring a custom home builder for part of the work. Hybrid GC approach. Thoughts?
Here's my story. We bought a home in South Burlington 3 years ago. There were tenants but the seller bought them out to vacate because our builder said we'd be building in months. We started working with a builder who is a build plus builder. After we took possession the builder said we'd be building in a few months. Never happened. They gave us the name of a planner who dropped the ball and never filed the minor variance (after we learned 9 months later). We disconnected all the utilities as per the builder's request. Eventually when we got the variance approved in December 2022 the butterflies in my stomach were saying that we can't continue with this builder. Things didn't add up to this point so we basically gave them notice (we're looking at our legal options but that's another story). We decided to put our property up for sale and rent simultaneously to maximize our options. We didn't get the offers I wanted. So we are back at considering build again but the quotes we've got are significantly above budget. I talked to a homeowner who got a custom build done that suggested I hire subcontractors to do the kitchen, bathrooms, tiles, flooring, painting and get a builder to demolish, pour the concrete, frame, drywall, doors, windows, plumbing, electrical, etc and to postpone building the basement for 2 years. He found significant savings this way (eg. painting for $3000 + cost of paint vs $30,000). We're not looking to have $600 taps in our home (frankly, from our experience proved to be far less reliable than many other common brand names). Above ground (2 storey) total square footage is 3800 square feet. Basement estimated at 2100 sq feet. I'm trying to get in a total cost of $1.4 million. Question: If we take the approach suggested above ie. builder builds up to the point of inside finishes what would the estimated cost be?