There are two ways to build. Most people only know about one.

Same house, two different roles for you to play. Here’s what actually changes.

General contractor

  • Someone else pulls the permits and carries the license liability
  • Standard markup of 15–25% on top of materials and labor
  • Subcontractors are whoever the GC already works with
  • Your project competes for attention against their other jobs
  • You get a finished house, without visibility into how it was built

Owner-builder

  • You pull the permits and take on the GC role yourself, with guidance
  • No markup — that 15–25% stays in your project
  • You interview and choose every subcontractor on the job
  • Your project sets its own pace, on its own schedule
  • You finish knowing exactly how your home was built, wall by wall

It’s not always all-or-nothing — some projects use a General Contractor and owner-builder approach, hiring a GC for select phases while managing the rest yourself.

The advantages

What you actually gain

Keep the margin

The 15–25% a GC would charge for coordination stays in your project instead — often tens of thousands of dollars.

Choose your trades

You interview and select every subcontractor who works on your home, not whoever the GC already has on call.

See everything

No layer between you and your project — you always know what has been paid for, inspected, and completed.

Set the pace

Your project runs on its own schedule, not competing for attention against a GC’s other jobs.

Know your home

You finish the project understanding exactly how it was built — valuable for years of ownership after the last inspection.

This isn't effortless. Here's what it actually asks of you.

Owner-building means real responsibility: pulling permits under your own name, hiring and managing your own subcontractors, coordinating inspections, and handling draw payments correctly. Get any of these wrong and it costs you — a failed inspection can stall a project for weeks; a bad draw schedule can leave you paying a subcontractor before their work is verified.

The owner-builders who do well aren’t the ones who already knew how to run a project. They’re the ones who learned the process before they needed it, not in the middle of needing it.

That’s the part I help with.

Walk through how it works