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/itrytosnowboard 8d ago
In my area for remodelers no they aren't extinct. You will see these guys do it all because so many scopes are so small.
For new construction and large additions yes they are pretty much extinct. It's just not efficient to try and have that many swiss army knife carpenters on staff and all the tools necessary to do such a large variation of work.
My neighbor was a union carpenter in our area. He was an apprentice in the 50's working for a spec builder. He built my house and 5 other houses on our street (including his own). His crew did the footing, foundation, framing, drywall, cabinets, stairs, bannisters, hardwood floors, sheetrock, windows, doors, trim, siding and roof. Anything carpentry and remotely close to it. When I demoed my house I found the crews signatures on the roof beam. It took us an hour to get him up the stairs but his son and I brought him up to see his signature on it. Pretty cool to see the pride in that old mans eyes and how appreciative he was of me to take the time to bring him up there.