Welcome to the community of future builders! The goal of this community is to make it easier for you to tackle your first build. We are here to share techniques, budgets, mistakes, corrections, and share anything that helps advance each others builds. There is a leaderboard to track engagement and reward members who contribute - here’s how it works: POINTS: You earn points when other members like your posts or comments. 1 like = 1 point. This encourages users to produce quality content and interact with other members in the community. LEVELS: As you gain points, you level up. Your level is shown at the bottom right of your avatar. The number of points required to get to the next level is shown under your avatar on your profile page. In the future, contests will be announced to reward weekly/ monthly leaders, and prizes will be available at certain levels. INACTIVITY: Please note, the intention of this group is to create and active and engaged community that helps everyone involved advance their goals of building a home. If you entered the group during the free start up period, and are inactive for longer than 30 days, you may be removed from the group. NOW TOO, KICK THINGS OFF! Please comment below introducing yourself. Let us know: 1. Your province and city. 2. What's your big why is for wanting to build? 3. Your #1 hurdle, bottleneck, or fear at this point in your journey. 4. Your social media handles so we can all connect and watch our build progress! See you in the comments! Let’s get building! Mitch

Words of warning to anyone who has not acquired land yet but is considering this avenue. I have spoken with several owner builders that have had problems with this recently, and even big builders are under pressure seeing banks trying to shrink their access to credit. If you can get a smoking deal on land right now have a long time horizon, it can be worth considering, but otherwise, you should be aware that this is likely the number one hurdle you will face right now outside of the fact that material and labor prices still have not come down enough to make building your own home lucrative at our current resale prices. At this moment, resale prices seem to be falling faster than the construction inputs to build new (material and labor), so the ideal time to build your own home if your goal is to maximize your upside or value for your dollars does not seem to be at this part of the cycle. I hope everyone is well. Take this time to learn and be patient, the time to buy land and build will return. If you already own land, simply GC'ing your own build at this time can still save you money vs paying a turnkey builder, but if you have not committed to this route yet, beware of the current challenges.

Here is a small update for everyone. Anyone with advice or any initiative to help please comment or PM me. Our plans are done. Here is what is left we have to do. I assume we will be putting the shovel in June. 1) Septic design ($2000-4000) 2-4 weeks 2) Geothermal design (1000) 2-4 weeks 3) Engineered windows/energy report because our windows cover more than 22% of exterior (1200) 1 week 4) Truss and joists Desgin and quotes (free) 2-4 weeks 5) Finalizing survey/ site plan (already paid 12,000... I expect to pay another 2000) 1 week 6) Heat-loss (300-500) 1 week 7) Solar system Desgin (free) to be included on detached workshop roof 1 week 8)GRCA PERMIT (500) unknown 9) building permit/city fees

I started this group many months ago with the intention of it being a simple place to go to understand whether or not building your own home was feasible for you. My intention was that, if it was feasible to build, I would be building out the perfect solution to help you manage your first build with a full video library I had been working on from a real build over a period of 9 months. What I have found so far is that people need far more help with budgeting and feasibility analysis than I first anticipated. At first I thought most of the help people would need would be on the technical and logistical side of actually being in charge of the building process, but I see now that a high level of help is needed from day one. With all that being said, I know that in order to actually help everyone in here move forward meaningfully, I would have to start hosting at least weekly calls, and pulling in more resources, experts, templates ect for people to follow. In order to be able to set aside the time required to do this, I would need the time invested in these activities to produce some revenue to offset the time away from my regular business. I am currently in the middle of considering whether it is best to: a) Leave this as a free group in its current format, more or less user driven without much direct guidance. b) Start to charge some kind of a monthly fee for remaining in the group, but include more direct coaching and continue to build out the video lesson library. c) Start a second group aimed only at the most serious owner builder/ first time builders at a higher one time fee to provide a high level of direct support and consulting. Please take a moment to fill out the survey below, and feel free to chime in with comments or shoot me a DM if you have further thoughts on this topic. Regards, Mitch

Looking for a software tool that is free where I can throw my numbers on it to keep it together. Excel is okay. But would be nice to have an actual tool or app. Any ideas welcomed. Thank you