True Built Home

Great option for those who want to be involved in the build. Office staff could have better customer service but superintendent Don Dougherty was pleasure to work with and I would recommend him. Overall would say it was pleasurable understanding that building a home is highly stressful. If you want to be hands off with a turn key project may not be the builder for you; however if you want a value builder that allows you to deliver instant equity and delivers the project timely, and at a fair price. This is a great option, I would use again on a future project. Thanks again Don.

We’ve just moved into our TB home. Overall we are very happy. Our PM Don D. does a very good job coordinating subs, communicating with us, and checking on the project weekly. I was impressed with True Built’s relationship with most of the subcontractors. The CoConstruct software is a nice tool to keep everybody in the loop. Be aware that there are many tasks that are the homeowner’s responsibility BUT must be coordinated with True Built. As with any large endeavor there are many details. Read your contract carefully and take extensive notes in your pre-construction meeting. Overall a very good experience and would recommend.

The TL;DR is I am extremely happy with the home, and would do it all over again, but it did take much longer than I expected (3.5 years), and cost more than I planned (50% more)(neither was TrueBuilt's fault). Don went above and beyond on more than one occasion to keep the project moving forward, which I greatly appreciated. The long version, I hired a construction consultant at the end of 2020, since I had no idea what was involved in building a house. We found a piece of land we liked and had a septic feasibility study done in December of 2020. The feasibility came back good, so I bought the property in January 2021. During that process my wife found TrueBuilt, and we starting working with them on the house plans. I picked their largest house plan, the Warren, but asked them if I could move the laundry room from the main floor up to the 2nd floor instead. They basically said you can do whatever you want, we just have a nominal re-draw fee, at which point my internal monologue sounded like Ace Ventura, Re-he-he-heally? With the freedom they just gave me to revise the floorplan, I went hard to work changing the floorplan to my preferences: -Increased size of kitchen and island (photo included) -wide open living room with massive fireplace (photo included) -dining room deleted, and added to garage space as a workshop area (photos included) -laundry room moved upstairs -upstairs office increased in size, and converted to a bedroom -all upstairs bedroom closets increased to walk-in size -added bathroom upstairs -several walls moved to fit the spaces just how I wanted them -10ft ceilings on the main floor -11ft deep crawlspace, for a future basement remodel (photos included) - added 3 car detached garage, for 6 cars total -covered back porch, with fireplace -custom master shower -several non-standard finishes added, stone tub-surround for example (photo included) Ok, that was fun, let's submit the plans and get to building, how long should that take, like a month or two? No. Keep in mind this is King County, Washington. TrueBuilt re-drew the plans pretty quickly and got them to my consultant, who also happens to deal with permitting, and we got them submitted to the county. They didn't even look at them for over a year, ouch, and when they finally did, we went around and around so many times it was dizzying. Oh, and did I mention my consultant went out of business right in the middle of the permitting process, so my wife and I had to learn on the fly what needed to be done so we could keep the project moving? Anyways, I'll spare you the details, but 26 months later we finally had a permit. During this time we were also subjected to the massive amounts of inflation caused by our really smart and great government, hence the 50% increase in expected cost. Now, onto the fun part, building! (not sarcastic, really) I thoroughly enjoyed the build process, it was very exciting to see each milestone, however small, after waiting over 2 years just to get a single piece of paper allowing us to start. If the permitting process wasn't already too much for most people, this is the part where panic might set in. TrueBuilt was very clear at the beginning during the preconstruction meeting that they took care of a certain set of items, and there was a list of things I would be responsible for. This means finding contractors, scheduling, etc to make sure their work integrated into the build schedule to not have any delays. Some things right off the top that I was responsible for were: -porta-a-potty rental -dumpster -excavation of the property -utilities -concrete driveway, porches and walkway -basement waterproofing -landscaping -paint, interior and exterior -flooring -garage wall decoration, wood and brick -fireplace mantles and custom built-in media cabinet -shower doors The actual build went very smooth thanks to my and my wife's diligence, and Don working closely with us to make sure things got scheduled at the right times, and the quality was top notch every step of the way. The house turned out beautiful!

Honest Review of our house (Juniper Plan): Overall for the cost savings, and speed of the build I would give True Built 5 stars. The guts of the house/ foundation, electrical, plumbing, heating/ac, roof, windows, framing, insulation, Drywall- high quality. A+ Cosmetically some finishes could have been higher quality, but on a tighter budget we had the choice to put more money to get higher quality but didn't. We are still very happy with how it turned out, and down the road easy hires. One note - It's hard to remember all the home owner items from the first meeting, be sure to over communicate and ask your Project manager what items are coming up on the schedule are your responsiblity. We had some small hickups IE: installing doors before they were painted, not realize caulking and painting trim were home owner items, electrical hookup for the septic, Range Hood Vent, Garage Steps, and timing of PUD to get power before drywalling. If there are any customized options be sure to over communicate exactly what you want months before it is planned on the schedule. We did end up liking the flexibilty to add our own customized shower tiling and main flooring which we paid ourselves and were credited in the contract. The money side with True Built was extremely easy, and Carol does a great working with the banks so you don't have to. In summary if you don't have any knowledge of home building like we didn't, make sure you have a good sitework contractor to get everything set up for TB. After that, I don't see anyone else beating the speed and cost that TB was able to get our home done in. TB started concrete Mid August and we were in our house by early February, and loving it.

As the first customer for True Built's Seaview model, I was expecting some unpleasant surprises since there was bound to be a learning curve. To True Built's credit, the building process was remarkably smooth and the end result is an amazingly beautiful home. My experience working with the team in the Tacoma office is that they are very competent and truly care about doing a quality job. I particularly want to thank Andy who dealt with up-front sales, Paul James for customizing the stock floorplan, Mia who offered excellent advice on design options, Jason for keeping small issues from growing into big problems, Mike and JC who managed day-to-day construction, and last but not least, the variety of subcontractors that had to cope with winter weather at 2000' elevation.