HOW WE OPERATE
APPROACH
markets to perform spec builds with returns ranging from 15% to 50%, and completion in 10 – 15 months.
Roseville, Fairfield and Vacaville into ‘prime markets’ like Sonoma, Healdsburg, Santa Rosa, Napa, and the Silicon Valley to obtain discounted labor rates that are 10% to 15% lower than those found in the ‘prime markets’.
200-million-dollar relationships with the industry’s largest commodity suppliers, such as, lumber mills, concrete suppliers, window suppliers, roofing suppliers, drywall suppliers etc...
‘The Design Company’s’ Founder | Principal Designer, Jessica Lauren. Jessica has been able to achieve multi-million dollar looks for much less through utilizing finish material selections practiced in her 2 million to 20 million dollar spec home and custom home projects in the highly desirable Silicon Valley, San Mateo, Sonoma and Placer Counties.
PROCESS
- Identifying items that can cause excess costs and or delays on projects such location and condition of project utilities, whether there are city utilities or well/septic, probability of getting soils to perc for septic, wetland or vernal pools, expansive soil or soil with liquefaction properties which will affect foundation types and costs.
- Generate project proformas - Working with our designers and contractors to create site improvement costs and vertical construction estimates based on actual designs.
- Leverage established and proven processes utilized by our sister companies ‘The Custom Home Company’ and ‘The Design Company’ to ensure the designs are not going to exceed the construction budgets established on the project proformas by updating site improvement and construction budgets as the design develops.
– We require both our sister company ‘The Custom Home Company’ and any other builders to obtain multiple sub-contractor bids for each trade or provide ‘fixed, not to exceed’ bids. Requiring multiple sub-contractor estimates from our builders insures we are always getting the best ‘fair market pricing’ as sub-contractor pricing fluctuates based on the sub-contractor’s workload, rising and declining commodity prices, proximity to project, etc…
- Reduce change order and cost surprises by creating trade ‘Scopes of Work’ that are unique to each project and each project plan.
– We greatly reduce construction delays by updating project schedules weekly and circulating them to vendors every week. We also have ‘performance clauses’ and ‘liquidated damage clauses’ for project delays, caused by vendors lack-of manpower or planning errors, inputted into their contracts/scopes of work.
– Leverage volume building material purchasing from our large workload and established vendor/supplier relationships.
EXECUTION
– We ‘stack’ our subs when possible and when it will not sacrifice quality. Several ‘behind the wall’ and ‘rough trades’ can work in the house at the same time together including while the roof is going on and windows are going in. We use Microsoft Project ‘Gantt Chart Schedules’ which allows us to always know the fastest ways to finish our projects with its ‘Critical Path’ feature.
– Many of our vendors are large scale companies with large staffs allowing them to complete their projects much faster given the repetition, without sacrificing quality, compared to smaller companies in the same trade. These large-scale companies also work off tighter profit margins which creates savings that rolls down to the bottom line to increase profits on our spec projects.
– Quality is critical and a huge focus for us on our projects. Achieving a multi-million-dollar look requires the most experienced and detail-oriented craftsmen. Our custom cabinet makers, master carpenters, expert tile and countertop setters have been groomed over the last decade to achieve the quality expected on our multi-million-dollar projects.
– Our project managers have all overseen a variety of ultra-high-end custom homes ranging from 1.5-milion to 25-million-dollar projects on a multitude on property types such as flat lots, hillsides and mountainsides. The experience our project managers add to our homes equates to quick problem solving when the ‘unknowns’ happen and enforcement of the highest quality control.
– Our Principal Designer, Jessica Lauren, is an expert at achieving the highest end looks… for less. Jessica stuns her clients by providing $5 to $7 tiles and hardwood samples that are typically un-distinguishable to the $15 to $20 samples that are the same size, color and or pattern. Jessica has taken decorative electrical and finish plumbing packages created by homeowners or a homeowner’s designer for their custom home that ranged between $60,000 to $100,000, and value-engineered remarkably similar packages for $20,000 to $35,000. Jessica has even produced decorative electrical and finish plumbing packages for $7,000 to $9,000 in homes that valued or sold between 1.6-million to 3-million.
