Hot Dogs and Houses

Courtesy FoodnessGracious!

Ordering a hot dog packed with all kinds of good stuff, and building or remodeling your home have at least one thing in common - they are both transactions. But the similarities end there. True, you start with a raw product (either the "dog" or an empty lot) and you add things as desired. But one takes literally seconds to produce, and the other months. Therein lies the difference. Production time raises some interesting issues.

If building a home were as simple as slapping a dog on a bun, squirtin' and spoonin' some great tasting condiments on it and calling it good, friction between parties involved in the transaction would be absolutely minimal. But time has a way of adding emotion, and emotion sometimes fractures relationships. Performance plays a much larger role in building/remodeling than it does at the hot dog stand. So does cost!

Understanding that it takes longer and costs more to build your home than it does to decorate your "dog," here are some tips for surviving the longer transaction period:

• Building a home is like putting together a gigantic size jigsaw puzzle. It's not just dog, bun, mustard, ketsup etc., it thousands of parts which must be put together in a very specific order. Being highly organized helps! Hiring professionals that are highly organized and have a specific administrative plan for putting those pieces together, will cut down on mistakes and improve efficiency.
• Do your part! Whether it's deciding if its as simple as ketsup, mustard and/or relish, make your housing selections decisively. Remember, construction is like a "big ball" - if it slows down or stops waiting for you to make a decision, it's very hard to get the ball rolling again.
• You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. A positive, fun, engaging personality attracts a lot more attention than negativity. Basic human nature says that we would all rather work for someone who is nice and fun than for an 'ole sour puss!
• "Hold things loosely, and people tightly." A house is a "thing," but the people putting it together have eternal significance. Focusing on the workers and realizing imperfect people make mistakes ensures that value is placed in areas having eternal significance.

We all want what we want. Sometimes getting it requires a little bit more time and effort. Next time you order a "dog" just the way you want it, be grateful it's a simple transaction, easily corrected if it falls on the floor!

Managing Expectations

A call came in recently from an interior designer who is interviewing for a position on the Project Team with a new client of ours. We're big on Project Teams! Matter of fact, I've written a whole book on the subject. Time and again the most successful projects in which we have ever been involved all have had a Project Team. There's no substitute for hiring your professionals early in the process, charging them with responsibility and parameters, and managing their creativity. Saves all kinds of time (read: you don't have to "re-do"), and money - promise!

Anyway... before giving our new client a proposal for her services the interior designer wanted to understand how we like to administrate our projects. In other words, what are our expectations. Huh...imagine that. Someone willing to invest some time in the project BEFORE getting hired to better understand what our needs, desires, and expectations might be! If I get a vote - she's hired!

Every client that walks through our office door comes with a full set of expectations. They may not realize it at the time, but sure enough, once we get down to brass tacks those expectations are right there. 'Building our home shouldn't take more than 6 months, should it?' 'What does it cost per square foot to build our home - you can do it for $125psf can't you?' 'I'm going to live upstairs while you remodel the downstairs.' Some of the expectations are just as obvious as these while some are much more subtle. 'Once the project is under roof we don't expect you will have any weather delays.' 'Surely you won't mind if we provide all of the ceramic tile for our home...' Or even 'you'll have someone on-site managing our project at all times, won't you?'  Hundreds, maybe even thousands of expectations come with every project. Everyone paints pictures in their mind of how situations will turn out. Without sitting down and hashing it out, a formula for disaster has just been defined!

Builders should all do what our wives want us to do more of anyway - COMMUNICATE! A healthy dose of ANTICIPATION doesn't hurt either. We need to be about the business of trying to understand what our clients expect.

Homeowners also share in the responsibilities of communicating and anticipating, yet because they are not seasoned building professionals they often don't know what questions to ask. Not knowing what questions to ask speaks to the heart of building a Project Team. Though unclear about what information may be necessary, most people "know people," and that's precisely what makes up the Project Team. By selecting your architect, builder, interior designer, and landscape architect based on natural chemistry, an advantage will be gained by hiring advocates who will guide you through the oftentimes scenic journey of building or remodeling. These professionals will also help you define your expectations. And not only "define," but shape those expectations into realistic goals for your Project Team. 

I know, I know....slowing down to take the time to build a Project Team is like ripping the wrapping paper off a highly anticipated gift only to find out that you must fully assemble it before you truly know what it can do! We don't live in a world that likes to wait on ANYTHING!! So add one more thing to your contrarian list in life - the less project planning you do upfront, the more time energy and money you will spend on your overall project! 

Gotcha...

The old saying goes, "you don't know what you don't know." So when you're building that home of your dreams, or remodeling the one you love, how do you know what you don't know? It's a fair question. In today's highly competitive housing market how do you know you're getting what you paid for when half the stuff you are paying for is covered up?

Substantiated rumors are floating around town that builders are using apartment grade plumbing on million dollar homes. But how is the consumer supposed to know about the quality of the pipes being installed behind the walls? When your water lines are decomposing or being eaten by bugs five years down the road its really too late to start questioning the integrity of what your builder is using on your job! And trust me, it happens everyday...

"Specifications don't mean anything in residential construction anymore," groaned one lumberyard vendor recently. Architects may draw it, and structural engineers may specify the materials necessary to make it strong, but some builders are changing lumber grades, product spacing and materials to cheapen costs and improve profit margins. No single construction item is more prone to homeowner deception than lumber. Why? Because ultimately everything is covered up! "Builder are wanting to get through their warranty period (with a homeowner) and that's it - period!" With the abundance of products available to a builder, changing the grading stamp on a ceiling joist, varying the distance between framing members, or even swapping out a specified plywood for OSB (oriented strand board) can make as much as a 10% cost difference in the cost of a framing package. And 10% of the cost of the single largest commodity going in your home can mean thousands of dollars in the builder's pocket!!

On a shorter leash you may not know that the $7,500 allowance your builder gave you for plumbing fixtures needed in your million dollar home will barely do the Master Bath. But you'll figure it out when you go to Ferguson Enterprises to select fixtures for the whole house and spend $25,000! By then the ink will be dry on the contract and it's too late to renegotiate. Can you spell "cost overrun?"

In tight economic times where way too many builders are competing for way too few projects, many believe the name of the game is 'get the contract signed, and make it up on change orders.' Builders feel they can deal with the fallout later. After all, who doesn't build a house understanding that there will be some cost overruns?!!

Recently we were hired to review the specifications for a couple's "dream home" after some problems arose between their builder and the bank. Budgets seemed low, and parts were definitely missing. To be safe we had our guys bid the work. Our estimate was 82% higher than the couple's builder, who, it turns out, had just declared bankruptcy! Forget the dream home, the couple purchased a nice pre-owned and have settled in comfortably.

Sensationalism you say...maybe until it's your project, but then it has a way of becoming all too real.

Disasters such as these can be avoided. Consider these tips before you build or remodel your next home:

• Build a team of professionals (architect, builder, interior designer, and landscape architect) and empower them with the specific scope of work required. Part of that scope of work needs to be a realistic budget.
• Challenge the team to not only work with the parameters you've outlined, but also "value engineer" where possible to produce the same product for less money.
• Demand total accountability and absolute transparency by requiring weekly reports detailing each team member's progress. This type of communication ensures that everyone associated with your project is singing off the same sheet of music.

For more practical tips, pick  up a copy of my book, UnHinged - A Homebuilder's Secrets for Saving Time & Money (Amazon), and my app, BuildCHX (iTunes or Google Play).

"App-tly Named" BuildCHX(TM)

It's all my daughters' fault. Just about the time I finished publishing my homeowner's helpful hints book UnHINGED - A Homebuilder's Secrets for Saving Time and Money, the girls sat me down one day and said 'Dad, we sure are proud of you for writing a book, but our generation is never going to read it! You must produce an easy to use app which does the same thing.' You've got to be kidding me - after all that work somehow I have to condense the content of the book into a usable building tool for the phone?

SURPRISES are the enemy of all building projects. We wanted to create a transparency for the building process so that homeowners were never left with the two most common jobsite questions, "What happens next," and "What selections do I need to be making?" So we created an app that helps homeowners through the building process.

The new, one-of-a-kind app, BuildCHX allows the user to track the building process through a chronological roadmap of steps necessary to build or remodel a home. Suddenly, magazine clippings are now a thing of the past. The new app also links the building process with idea boards that allow the user to capture and catalog ideas and inspiration for their project.  

I had the idea that it is one thing to catalog ideas, and another to share them. So, I intentionally built the functionality in BuildCHX to share the idea boards with key members of the building team. I call it "TeamShare." Ideas and photos are also linked to Facebook and Twitter for ease of sharing with friends and family.

Ultimately I had the homeowner in mind when designing this app. However, designers, architects and builders, who all manage multiple projects at one time, have also expressed their interest in using the app to help keep their information straight.


As you can imagine, we are excited with the outcome. But what are others saying? Let's follow the early election returns:

 Just paid for the app and made some money! by Roxy Ryan

We are having our house built and are at the beginning of Step4. Upon reviewing previous steps found a tip we had overlooked. We just saved $275! A "must have" if you're building a house and want to stay on top of things.

BuildCHX Review by Cheryl Murff

What a great tool for building or remodeling! This is a must for anyone who wants to glean from a top notch builder!

Homeowner by Jmaddhill

This is a great app if you're building or remodeling a house. Tons of practical steps help you organize the building/remodeling process from A to Z. The ability to easily share product choices among a group (homeowner/decorator/builder) is fantastic part of this app! I highly recommend it! 

The app was published on October 17th and is available in the iTunes Store. An Android version is due out in late November.

Check it out, leave me a comment and/or write a review. We want to know what you think! Still yearning for more? Us too....stay tuned for future enhancements which will make BuildCHX even better!

Reviving the Greek

For twenty-eight years Cozy and Mark Palmer dreamed of having a Greek Revival Farmhouse - now they live in one! The Palmers entrusted Hoebeke Builders, Inc. with helping design and build their dreamhouse. Last week they moved in.

To say the process went well would be an understatement. Mark and Cozy were dream clients! Always ready with a picture, or a video, their desires were communicated very simply and clearly. Right down to the highly polished black handrail on the front stairs.

Before our book, UnHINGED - A Homebuilder's Secrets for Saving Time & Money was...well, UnHinged, the Palmers followed the premise of the book perfectly by building a project team that included: architect Paul Turney, interior designer Rebecca Low, landscape architect Daniel Houchard and his company From The Ground Up, and Hoebeke Builders. Each different discipline performed their work on time, and in concert with the rest of the team. The results are obvious.




It's always great to finish a project and walk away with a new set of best friends! Special thanks from my end to the best business partner a guy could ever have, Phillip McCloud, who dogged the details and made a wonderful home S U P E R B! 

Just Released...

If you follow this blog, "Raising the Roof..." became "UnHINGED - A Homebuilder's Secrets for Saving Time and Money." (What in sam hill is he talking about?) The book! Amazon just released that labor of love so often mentioned and described on this blog. After months of writing, editing, re-editing, re-writing, editing some more, formatting (whatever that is), and working on a cover, UnHINGED is finally off my desk.

So who are we trying to hit? National Association of Homebuilders says that every year in America 305,000 new custom homes (not tract) are built. AND... $191billion is spent on remodeling. Ahhhhhhh...that's quite a market. So here we go, beating the drum.

35 years of building homes and working with clients have taught me a thing or two about the building process. Literally hundreds of friends and family have called through the years asking about various aspects of the construction industry. As we have become fond of saying, "you should know what I know..." and now, with UnHINGED you will! The pages are filled with all kinds of time and money saving tips. Would you believe it if I told you that we serve those tips and ideas up with a little bit of humor too?

Is this some sort of swan song or something? Shoot NO! Hoebeke Builders, Inc. is just gettin' goin good! 

Practice Makes Perfect

It was totally predictable. Just like the waves that crash on the beach of the Monterrey Peninsula, the lure of big profits, and fast easy cash flow has once again washed in a whole new crop of builders! Because Texas has steadfastly refused to implement contractor licensing, anyone can hang out their shingle and start building homes. All it takes is a cell phone and a truck... And everybody in Texas has a cellphone and a truck, right?

With every downturn in the economy we see overextended "homebuilders" finding themselves short on cash, crashing on the rocks, and washing out to sea. All too often the naive homeowner is left holding the bag. But with every wave that washes out, another economic wave swells, and a whole new crop of builders washes into town. Fortunately this happens less in other areas of the country where wannabe contractors have to apprentice two years under an established builder before they can even sit for a highly rigorous licensing test. But not in Texas!


We endorse the idea of injecting new, energetic builder blood into the marketplace. But the lack of regulation governing their training puts the unsuspecting homeowner at risk.

Years ago crops of new builders at least tried to make an effort to learn something about the homebuilding business by taggin' along with the subcontractors and watching, or sometimes even working, with those that have practiced a craft for years. Now we have "cellphone" builders that know nothing of the minutia of building homes -they drive around in their truck all day barking orders at the subs by phone. Sadly it's left up to the subs to try and figure out how to get the houses built. The grand loser? Why the homeowner of course!

What most other states have figured out is that there are thousands of little bitty nuiances to the homebuilding business that need to be learned to protect the homeowner. Ahhhhh...that's called "experience!" Thousands of little 'tricks of the trade' need to be learned before a high quality product can be produced. For example did you know that:

• The maximum clear span of a 2 x 12 without significant deflection is 18'?
• Or, that ions of dissimilar metals (two or more) used together most often results in one of the metals eating the other metal? This can happen in just a year or two - not good for water intrusion!
• Or, that paint and stain rags left in a heap will ignite due to "spontaneous combustion," and fire travels at a rate of 17 feet/second?
• Or, that compressive strength of a concrete pier depends not only on the strength of the bearing rock, but also on the "skin friction" of the pier walls?
• Or, that brick is an inhibitor of rain and snow moisture but the porosity of the brick and mortar requires that metal flashings extend all the way through the brick and up the exterior wall?
• Or, that the standard backset (distance between the edge of the door and the center of the knob) of door hardware is 2 3/8" - not suitable when the doors have 3 1/2" stiles (vertical members) and you are trying to get the knob in the middle of the door.
• Or, that lacquer and lacquer products are highly flameable and cannot be used around any live electrical source that isn't fully contained? (Read: blow your house up!)

And on...and on...and on... The point is practice makes perfect! Is there really any substitute for experience? How can a guy just starting out in the homebuilding business, that doesn't have the benefit of either an apprenticeship, or rigorous testing, and hasn't done his time in the trenches of experience, qualify to undertake the construction of probably the single largest purchase a family will ever make? Maybe the better question is "would you really want to live in a house built by a guy just cutting his teeth?"

A Platform to Argue

An armored truck took out the rear quarter panel of my truck a few months back. No one was hurt and the armored truck company quickly referred me to their insurance company to get the damage repaired. "Let the games begin!" After a few months of chasing my tail trying to get the truck fixed, I went back the other day to the armored truck company (couldn't get any satisfaction with the insurance company) and reminded them that this was their problem, not mine, and they needed to send someone over with a rent car to pick up my truck and take it in to have it repaired. No matter that I was stopped at a red light when I got hit, both the armored truck company, and the insurance company made getting it fixed my problem. Today, they brought me my rent car!

This most recent foray into the wonderful world of insurance comes on the heels of no less than three really good insurance fights last year! WHY WON'T THESE PEOPLE DO WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, AND HONOR THEIR CONTRACT/POLICY?? Simple: Shareholders.

More and more there is talk in this country of a revolution. I'm convinced the revolution most probably will start over insurance and insurance companies. Rampant deception caused by excessively conservative policy interpretation has been inflamed by shareholder greed as they demand greater return on their investments. Who gets squeezed? You and I do! The more policies that are sold, and the more money insurance companies can take in translates to higher profit margins if  the company can weasel you out of benefits. 

Everyone knows that you have to have insurance. But when you buy protection, what do you really have? A platform to argue with the company that sold you the policy. Most likely they won't honor the face value language written in the policy. Congratulations, you've just invested your hard earned money to buy a place at the negotiation table. "Well the policy really doesn't say that, we interpret that phrase to mean this instead!" And on it goes.... If you don't like it, your Big Protective Brother's attitude is 'go ahead and sue me - we've got more money than you do, and we'll bleed you to death.'

Maybe it makes sense to hire an insurance attorney to read every policy before purchase so that all of the loopholes can be exposed. Do you suppose Big Protection will negotiate out the inconsistencies that are discovered? Good luck with that fight!

Cleanin' Out, Straightening Up....

At the end of a long, and very productive year it's time to clean the office out and straighten it up for the new year. One of the projects sitting on my desk for months has been a stack of CD's just beggin' me to open them up and glean the low hanging fruit of ideas, largely ignored, from projects long ago. Just like at the end of a wonderful fireworks show when the pyrotechnic experts send up whatever is remaining in the box, in no particular order, here are some of the pictures captured from those old CD's... Fasten your seatbelt, here we go! 

                                             Thhaa...That's all Folks! See you next year.