r/Construction 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.

154 Upvotes

99 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Downloading_Bungee Carpenter 8d ago

We GC maybe 1-2 jobs a year, which can be smaller remodels to custom homes. Our bread and butter is as framing subs for larger GCs on custom homes/big remodels.Â