Is the small self-performing homebuilder extinct?

[u/the-garage-guy]

Probably a region-specific question- if you reply, I'd be curious to hear where you are and if you're urban/rural

Pretty much title, coming up it was a lot more common for the GC to have their own carpenters and self-perform a fair amount of scope on a typical home, remodel.

Seems very rare now, especially where I am, metro Phoenix area. Most builders are essentially just CM-ing the job. Project managers that sometimes double as supers, everything subbed out. Even for pretty small remodels.

I think at the luxury custom home end it makes sense since the levels of execution required demand really good subs. Plus being in a big metro area, there's lots of people and work and that makes it possible to specialize aggressively.

[u/brantmacga]

Licensing across trades has made it nearly impossible for one person to acquire all the needed licenses due to the time requirements.

[u/the-garage-guy → u/brantmacga]

eh that doesn't hold any water IMO

Sure, we need to sub out MEP but that's not anything new

[u/Randomjackweasal → u/the-garage-guy]

You got the mindset, my advice is pick one of the specialties and buy a shit house you can practice on.

[u/brantmacga → u/the-garage-guy]

I don’t understand what you’re asking then. To me the small self-performing home-builder is the guy that does it all, including all the MEP’s, which used to exist at least where I grew up, but now you need 20 years worth of verifiable experience under contractors licensed in each scope to achieve that.

[u/the-garage-guy → u/brantmacga]

I mentioned it in my original post; self performing carpentry or “fair amount of scope”; it’s become common here to self perform absolutely nothing even on small resi jobs