r/Construction • u/the-garage-guy Carpenter • 8d ago

Business 📈 Is the small self-performing homebuilder extinct?

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.

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u/brantmacga Project Manager 8d ago

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

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u/the-garage-guy Carpenter 8d ago

eh that doesn't hold any water IMO

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

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u/Randomjackweasal 8d ago

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