Home Builder East Tennessee

[MPB]

Looking to find a Builder in East Tennessee to build a house in Baneberry, TN.
3 BDRM, 3 Bath. Have plans, permits, approvals, Looking for a solid builder with good reputation and time to start in the next 90 days. Plans for house can been seen at www.radesign.biz (broken link) under plans page 2 (Bates). If interested I can be contacted at mpearl51@yahoo.com

[fun4me]

Hi MPB,
I was reading anything with Baneberry, TN and came across you post. Did you get to build your home? Great floorplan! We bought land in Baneberry and went for the 4th of July week to talk to several builders, getting ideas. We met with several builders and talked about some prices and also the clearing of the land. This is around $35K to clear the land and do all the cement and prep the area. We found that kind of pricey, not too many trees on our lot.
We still have to sell our home in Fl. but wanted to have an idea of the cost. The other important thing is we need to get jobs, we are not sure of the area to get a good job. We did the drive to Knoxville and that is a bit far to do everyday. Our lot sits at the top of the mountain, not sure if this is more like a retirement home or we can still live there and go to work daily.
Any information is appreciated! Also, maybe hints on what we could do. It's really got beautiful views of Douglas Lake.
Thanks for your feedback!!

[pgaff57]

We recently moved to Grainger county and are building. One thing I have found is that there is flexibility right now in building. We were quoted $165 sq ft to build in Apr/May and now we are getting bids more in the $100 sq ft pricing. The builders here tend to go into several counties because of homes being so spread out. As far as your cement work it seems that cement prices have gone thru the roof. Right now a load of cement is about $100 per truck, and that is cost. We are having a 1500 sq ft home built with a walk out basement and the walls are costing us $13000 and that is without any flatwork. Fortunately we did not have to have any land cleared so I can't help you with what that is running. Jobs are pretty limited depending on what you do. My husband retired and found a temporary job right away, our builder hired him as his project manager. Seems he'd been looking for one and felt my husband was a good fit. Although he'd never done actual contract work he did have a background that allowed him to know the building industry. I have been applying online to all the local banks as I have done teller work before and because we are semi retired I wanted something low key. Newport seems to have more available than the area we are in but it is a small town. I understand that they will be building an outlet mall there so that should add some jobs down the road.

Let me add a little tid bit of info that we have found here on building, the builders have very limited inspections and although there are codes my understanding is that they can be very lack on enforcing them. We are glad that we are able to oversee the job. Email me and I can give you some examples. It doesn't mean the builders are bad it's just how they do things here. Hope this info helps.

[fun4me]

Yes, this is helpful information! I am not sure exactly where you are in Grainger county, not familiar with the area. Are you from TN ?or did you relocate? We also met with some builders referred to us by our realtor. They don't have an office and we met with them at a gas station. They were very nice and one took us to a house he had just built. We also met with a Log Home builder, they have a nice place and their log homes are very nice. Unfortunately we are not ready for the move, need to sell our house in FL. It seems like it gets worse by the minute we have 3 house in foreclosures right now in our subdivision.
Your husband was lucky to get that job, hope he enjoys it. My husband works in the auto industry, works at a dealership as a parts consultant. I am an assistant branch manager for a finance company in the sub prime world. I would like to go back to banking myself, consumer lending or mortgages.
I thought the codes and the inspections would be a little flexible by what we saw....LOL I am not sure how far Newport is from Baneberry.

One thing that worries me is that we are at the top of the mountain and just to get there you need to drive around 15 minutes.....(the view is pretty nice once you get there overlooks the Douglas Lake)is this a place where we can go to work everyday? I wish we could say we are about to retire but we won't be ready for that anytime soon. Moving by itself could be exciting and stressful at the same time. Deciding about the jobs and availability in the area if close or not is another issue. I know for sure that Knoxville is too far to drive daily. I probably have enough time to think this over before we sell our house. LOL
Thanks for your help!

[Barking Spider]

A couple tips....
Do not take anyone's word on how good a builder is, or what a noce guy he is, or how he goes to church with the someone's Mother.

Go and look at a couple houses he has built recently. Talk to the owners of those homes, and find out how he did with costs and time lines. Also see how he performed with the follow up stuff.

Check with the State of TN and make sure he has a valid contractors license. See if there have been any complaints. Contractors license board can tell you this stuff.

Since this sounds like it's in an area where there is not much more than electrical and septic inspections, hire a professional home inspector to do progress inspections at critical times, then at the end BEFORE you pay the final payment.

I have worked on numerous lawsuits where builders have: 1) Had cost over runs that totaled almost 40% of the job, 2) were not licensed, 3) Did work so shoddy much of it had to be re-done, 4) Did such poor work the cost of putting it right was close to $100K, and, well you get the picture.

Also, the further out you are, the more likely the sub contractors will be less than skilled. I know this sounds harsh, but my opinion is based on doing thousands of inspections in East TN and hundreds in the areas out of the general area of Knoxville.

You just have to be VERY careful, and if you can not be there all the time, then you need to find someone that will be your eyes and ears for you.

[fun4me]

Thanks Barking Spider for all your comments and advise! I had not read the post.....We are still waiting and just hoping the market changes a bit so we can get our house on the market. We can't go further with anything yet until we have something we can count on, our house.

I will keep in mind all you have said and I had already heard a few things (things not taking place at the job site) have to be there.

The 2 places we liked the most are named builders and we hope that makes a difference. If we finally decide to do the log home, this builder seemed like the real deal, hopefully. I will make sure and let you know when the time comes.

Once again, your feedback is detailed and honest, that is all we can ask for............Thanks