Custom Homes

The first visit is spent outdoors. We want to know where water goes when it rains hard, which is a different question from where the surveyor drew the contours. We look at how the driveway would meet the street at a legal grade, whether the buildable envelope left by the setbacks and easements is actually the part of the lot you would want to build on, and how far the sewer main or a septic-suitable area sits from that envelope.

Then we look down. Central Arkansas hands you very different ground within short distances, and the surface is a poor witness. A lot on the ridges west of town can have shale within a few feet of grade, which turns a routine footing trench into rock work. A lot in the river valley can have clay that changes volume with the seasons, which is a movement problem rather than a strength problem. On some parcels the answer is obvious from the neighbours and the road cuts; on others it needs a borehole, and where it does we say so early enough for it to be a planned cost.

All of this lands in a written lot evaluation that goes to you before design begins. Where it finds something expensive, you find out while you can still change the plan, change the siting, or in the hardest cases decide against the parcel altogether. That last outcome is uncomfortable and it is occasionally the correct one, which is why the evaluation exists as its own stage rather than as an assumption folded into a bid.

Payments are tied to stages of finished work rather than to the calendar. The draw schedule is written into the contract with the triggering milestone named for each release, so a draw is a statement about the house rather than about the date. Where a construction loan is funding the build, the lender inspects before each release, and that inspection is a useful independent check on progress rather than an obstacle.

Schedule is handled the same way. You receive a stage-by-stage sequence rather than a single completion date, because a single date conceals which part of the project is actually at risk. If plan review runs long at your jurisdiction, that is visible as a stage rather than as a vague slippage. If a long-lead item — windows are the usual culprit — is going to govern dry-in, you know that in month two rather than month six.

Day to day, a superintendent runs the site and is the person you call. Trades arrive on scheduled windows and are coordinated by that person, not by you. When something is found that the drawings did not anticipate, work in that area stops, you get a call the same day, and the change is priced in writing before it proceeds.

At the end there are final inspections, a certificate of occupancy, and a walkthrough where everything you point at is written down and corrected, including the small cosmetic items people feel awkward mentioning. The full sequence and the closeout package are set out on the process page.