The overarching thought that construction will always be a huge risk and that there’s no way to avoid getting ripped off is a fallacy. There IS another way.

A major issue that many developers don’t often address head on is that despite their adjacent finance experience, there’s a lot they don’t know about design & construction.

When an inexperienced GP makes a major blunder on the finance side, it’s easy for other GPs/developers to (rightfully) point to their lack of financial experience as a reason for failure.

However, when the same guy makes major mistakes in decision-making during the design & construction process & materially hurt the reno/build, then it’s someone else’s fault— or they simply ‘got ripped off.’

There’s rarely recognition that lack of experience in the management of the design/build phase was really to blame.

When you know what questions to ask, what contract terms are relevant and what are the critical path actions you need to hold your team to, you are less likely to have people take advantage of you.

Often because they know you know better and know that trying something shady will only damage the relationship.

Bottom line: you need to know what you’re doing when you’re designing and building.

This boils down to a ‘time or money’ scenario. You can either learn, which will take you some time, or you can pay someone to do it for you (you can also learn a lot by having someone show you).

Either option will likely cost less than entering into a process where ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ and your chances of ‘figuring it out on the go’ are slim.