08/14/2025
Interested in the differences between and national builder, regional builder, and a local builder? Listed below are some differences in the actual on site goings-on. These differences are from experience and not perception. Working for one national builder and two regional builders years ago, we provide real life experiences and can testify to the inteior workings of each, and with 25 years building experience, we provide you with our testimony of the distict and real differences. Listed below are some important, yet usually overlooked, differences of what you will get having a home built by a local builder as compared to a national builder or a regional builder...not saying one is better than the other, but you make the call for whom you would prefer building your family's new home.
1) Local builders have thier own builders license and usually have more years of building experience than national or regional builders.
Fact: National Builders and Regional Builders hire project mangers to oversee the construction of the homes being built. These project managers usually are younger inexperienced nonlicensed people that are straight out of school or in a rare case, an older project manager with more experience but still no license.
2) Local builders normally have just a handfull of homes being built at one time. These homes are usually supervised by the builder themselves rather than the nonlicensed project manager. National and Regional builders have upwards of 12 to 20(or more) homes being built at one time being managed by a single project manager wth or with a helper or an assistant.
3) Local builders meet, discuss, and provide hands on, in person, inspections, material verification, work and code verification, client or customer walk throughs rather than relying on the project mangers to do the decision making and customer personal contact. LB's perform frame checks, work inspections in person and spend, on average, 2-3 hours per day at each home under construction. A NB's or RB's PM may spend 30 minutes per home each day if they are working hard. The checks and inspections are usually left to the local building officials.
4) LB's usually subcontract each trade to a licensed mechanical contractor(Electrician, Heating and Air Contractor, and Master Plumber), although they can perform this work under their license.The hired trade profesional will, more times than not, visit and in person instruct thier employees what they are expected to do and how it needs to be installed. They usually then inspect the work before leaving the job. NB's and Rb's also subcontract out mechanical work to licensed professionals, but rarely does the licensed person ever visit or inspect the job(too many to get to).
5) NB' and RB's usually have a deticated quality control and or a person who inspects the homes prior to customer walk throughs for the project managers. They check for obvious flaws and asthetic issues and provde a list to the project manager to complete. LB's walk the home and make the list themselves.
6) LB's use better than average materials to construct the homes they build. The term "builder grade" was coined from the products used by NB's and RB's to meet code requirements, but are cheaper than a higher quality product. Remember "code" is the basic requirement.
We will continue this narrative and expand it into the costs, and disadvantages LB's have in competing with RB's and NB's in another post.
Any questions or rebuttals, feel free to send us a PM or comment.
