r/Construction • u/Ok-Studio-510 • 5h ago

Informative 🧠 Residential Construction Advice

All of my experience is in high-rise in another state. My mother decided to build a house by/with someone she went to the same high school with (50yrs ago).

After a lot of questioning and clarification, she finally admitted she is on a square foot price contract. I have walked at the house, I am not happy. Because she can’t/won’t show me any paperwork; from my rough estimate, she is paying about $500 per square foot. She can’t provide me any subcontractor, material, or labor breakdowns.

I know demographics matter, this is suburban Utah. Could anyone please advise me on if this is going off the rails or I’m just out of my depth.

Does anyone have any advice to help me protect my mom as much as I can from this point out? She is in a contract, so she just might have to suck this up.

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u/MikeHaylesBuilds 1h ago

You are not out of your depth brother, you're asking the right questions.

Back in my plumbing and heating days (2000 - 2015), the builds/jobs that went sideways (the shite hit the fan) were mostly always the "he's ok, I know him from school" ones, because nobody wants to ask awkward questions.

Few things I'd do now:

  • Get a copy of the contract. She signed it, she's entitled to it. Then look at what the per square foot actually includes and what's listed as allowances, that's usually where it blows up.
  • Make sure every payment matches work actually done, and get lien waivers from him (and ideally the bigger subs/suppliers) with each draw.
  • Utah has a State Construction Registry where subs and suppliers file preliminary notices. Look up her property and you'll see who's actually working on it, which is a decent way to sanity check what he's telling you.

$500/sq ft isn't automatically crazy depending on finishes, but without a breakdown nobody can tell you either way.