What went wrong
People are always shopping for the best deal. However, the best deal is not always the best value. For many people a new house can drain all of your free cash and it is well worth it because there is few investments out there today that will perform as well as your investment in your new home. But be careful. There is an expression I like, never trip over of dollar to pick up a dime. So picture yourself going through this entire process to have your dream home be a box on a foundation sticking 6 feet out of the ground in a mud pit.
What went wrong? in my opinion the customer screwed up. Yep I said that.
They got the house he ordered, with the foundation and the stairs etc. It meets the building code and obviously got the approval of the town code enforcement office. But the devil is in the details and you don’t know what you don’t know. I see it every day. A customer who is so desperate to have someone tell them they can build the house they want for the price they want despite the fact that many others have told them it cannot happen. So when they get a builder to say, sure I can do it, they forget to define exactly what they are getting. Most builders refuse to do this, but there is always one that will. This guy found that one.
Does it matter? This house is worth Tens of thousands of dollars less like this, then it would if it had been done right. If you went to a stock broker and he suggested you buy the stock that is cheapest and 10 years later it was worth about what you paid for it while you buddies stock has doubled in value, you would fire your broker. It is incumbent on a builder to not only build you a good home, but to make sure that he anticipates and budgets for the cost of the things you would not have thought of, so when the house is done it is the best value you could have gotten.