How to Trust Your Contractor: 3 Essential Tools Every Addition, Remodel or Custom Home Needs
If you're adding on to your home or building an accessory dwelling, read this first.
Don’t start work until you have a design agreement, a construction agreement, and a budget.
If you’re planning an addition, remodel, or custom home, this is the most important information we can share with you: Three documents could save you countless hours and thousands of dollars.
You need a design agreement, a construction agreement, and a budget.
In any remodel or new construction project, there will be changes to make. Some of these changes are great improvements, some are in response to discoveries, and some are just part of the creative process (like picking kitchen pulls, paint colors, etc.) Anyone who promises there will be no mistakes and no changes is over-promising. It could be out of optimism and enthusiasm, or it could be an outright lie.
That’s why you need to protect yourself with a design agreement, a construction agreement, and a budget.
These three documents help the owner, designer, and contractor communicate expectations. That’s it. That’s the key to preventing problems.
At New Avenue, we’ve seen it all. Owners, designers and contractors trust our innovative system to manage projects across the US that cost anywhere from $50,000 to over $2,000,000. In one year, we see more transactions, proposals, and changes than most designers and contractors see in a lifetime. We incorporate those lessons into the industry’s best agreements and budgets.
Every project needs these three agreements to set the right expectations and establish a healthy working relationship. In fact, we think understanding them is so important that we’re sharing them here. As for implementing and following them, our system makes that easy and automatic.
New Avenue Construction Agreement
New Avenue Example Budget Format for $100,000 - $5,000,000
Projects are easier to manage, more efficient, and more affordable when the team has a clear understanding of the work to be done.
We cannot emphasize this enough: Use a design agreement, a construction agreement and a budget.
It saves you time and headaches.
It saves your designer and contractor time, and you save money.
It helps prevent mistakes, which means better quality.
When expectations are clear, everyone is happier.
Managing your project
Following the guidelines set forth in these agreements requires organization, and the New Avenue project management system makes that part easy.
Schedule your free call to talk to a project manager and get your project started.
