Category: Cost & Budget

Yes. Just not on the thing most people push on.

Custom home building isn’t car buying. There’s no sticker with padding baked in waiting for you to knock it out. What’s negotiable is the structure of the deal — and that’s worth more than the discount you were going to ask for.

Why the price itself barely moves

A custom home bid is mostly pass-through. Lumber, windows, concrete, and subcontractor labor are the majority of the number, and I don’t set any of them. The builder’s fee is the only part that’s actually mine.

Which means a meaningful “discount” has to come from one of three places:

1. The builder’s fee — a smaller slice than people imagine, and cutting it removes the margin that funds supervision and the ability to absorb problems.
2. Cheaper subs — which is exactly what you don’t want, and which you’ll discover at the punch list.
3. A thinner scope — legitimate, and the honest answer. But that’s not a discount, that’s a smaller house.

A builder who drops $40,000 in a phone call was either padding or is about to make it up somewhere you won’t see. That’s one of the red flags in bid collection.

What genuinely is negotiable

Roughly in order of value to you:

• Converting allowances into fixed line items. The highest-value ask on this page. “Price the actual tile I’ve selected and put it in the contract.” Costs the builder nothing but time and removes your single largest budget risk. Why allowances wreck budgets.
• Retainage. Percentage and release conditions. Ask for release tied to a verified punch list.
• The draw schedule. Tied to completed and inspected work rather than the calendar, so you’re never ahead of the work.
• Lien waivers as a condition of payment rather than a promise. Any legitimate builder agrees immediately.
• Inclusions at the boundary. Appliances, window coverings, landscape, final grade, and the driveway all sit in a gray zone. Getting one pulled inside the contract is easier than getting a price cut.
• Schedule terms. A defined substantial completion date and what happens if it slips for reasons inside the builder’s control.
• Selection deadlines. If you need longer to decide on something, ask now rather than blowing a deadline later.
• Third-party inspection rights at foundation, pre-drywall, and final.
• Warranty length and what’s covered. Idaho warranty basics.
• Change order markup percentage. Reasonable to discuss up front, awkward to raise mid-build.

Most of these cost the builder nothing and shift real risk off you. That’s a better trade than 3% off a number that was already tight. The full protection list.

What isn’t worth pushing on

• Doing design for free to win the build. Design is the work that produces a price anyone can stand behind. A builder who gives it away is either recovering it in the construction number or isn’t doing it properly. How the design agreement works.
• Skipping engineering or inspections. Never the place to save.
• Supplying your own materials to save margin. Now warranty and responsibility for that item are yours, and any delay is your delay.
• Asking the builder to work without a signed contract while you decide.
• Playing builders against each other on price after bids are in. In a small valley this gets around, and the good builders simply stop returning calls.

Where you have actual leverage

• Timing. A builder with a gap in the schedule is more flexible than one booked eighteen months out. Ask directly where you’d fall.
• Being easy to build for. Decisions made on time, a financed and ready lot, realistic expectations. Builders price difficulty, consciously or not, and the reverse is also true.
• Simplifying the design. Fewer roof planes, a simpler footprint, standard window sizes. Real money, and it comes out of cost rather than quality. What actually drives construction cost.
• Season. When your foundation goes in changes how the whole schedule sequences here.
• Being genuinely ready. Financing in place and a lot you own is worth more to a builder than a hard bargain from someone who might not proceed.

How to do it without losing the builder

1. Ask about structure, not discounts. “Can we convert the tile and lighting allowances to fixed line items?” gets a yes. “What’s your best price?” gets a polite non-answer.
2. Bring your asks once, in one conversation. Not a trickle of emails over three weeks.
3. Say why. “My lender wants a fixed number” is a reason a builder can work with.
4. Offer something. Flexible start date, faster selections, a simpler detail somewhere.
5. If the budget doesn’t work, say so plainly. A good builder will tell you what to remove. That conversation is productive; grinding on price isn’t.

One thing worth understanding about this market: the builders you want are choosing clients too. Being pleasant, decisive and clear about your constraints will get you more than being tough, and it costs you nothing.

Frequently asked questions

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— Bryce Swager, owner and lead builder, SwagerBuilds.

Every week someone asks me some version of the same question: “Is it cheaper to build or buy in Teton Valley right now?”

Most builders dodge it. I’m going to answer it with actual numbers, because I finally have a clean set — and the answer surprised a few people in my office.

Short version: in Driggs and Tetonia right now, building new costs about what buying an existing home does. The difference isn’t the price. It’s what you get for it.

Here’s the math.

What existing homes actually sell for

In October 2026 I asked Carl Struttmann at Compass Teton Valley to pull a CMA on Driggs and Tetonia: half-acre to 3-acre lots, 1,500 to 3,000 square feet, two to five bedrooms. Seven sales fit the search.

Average sold price: $507 per square foot. Average size: about 2,200 square feet.

That’s a mixed bag of homes — some well-built, some not, ages all over the map — and that $507 includes the land. It’s the number buyers are paying when they pick an existing home off the MLS.

Carl’s note on new construction, which I’ll quote because it matters: new builds “will command additional value” over those comps. New carries a premium. Keep that in your pocket.

What it costs to build new

Our custom homes start at $400 per square foot for construction cost — conditioned square footage only, no garage or porch padding, fixed price once the design is locked.

Plan for roughly 30% on top for everything around the house: site work, permits, design, landscaping, furnishings. Add your lot.

To keep this apples to apples, I’ll use a 2,000 square foot home — right in line with the homes in Carl’s comp set:

• 2,000 SF home → about $800K construction, about $1.04M all-in, plus the lot.

Side by side: a 2,000 SF home

	Buy existing	Build new with SwagerBuilds
Price	2,000 × $507 ≈ $1.01M (land included)	≈ $1.04M all-in + lot
Age	Average comp is 15+ years old	Zero
Layout	Someone else’s	Yours — designed around how you actually live
Energy code	Whatever year it was built	Current code, insulation and windows
Big-ticket systems	Roof, furnace, water heater on a clock	New, under warranty
Price certainty	Inspection surprises after closing	Fixed-price contract, 2–3% contingency, no allowances
Timeline	30–45 days	14–18 months build + design phase

Before the lot, those two numbers are within $30K of each other. Add a lot and the new build costs more on paper — until you price the roof, furnace, windows and remodel the existing home is going to need. In a lot of cases that gap closes to zero.

So why doesn’t everyone build?

Time. Buying takes six weeks. Building takes a year and a half, plus design. If you need a roof over your head by ski season, you buy.

If you can wait — and especially if you’d be remodeling a used home anyway — the math tilts toward building. You’re paying new-construction money either way; you might as well get a new house.

That’s the honest trade: money is roughly a wash, time is the real cost. Our whole process is built to make that time cost as small as possible for people who can’t babysit a job site — more on that at Custom Homes for Busy Professionals.

What this means on the west side of the valley

We’re building new homes in West Ridge Ranch, off Packsaddle Road, in the 2,000–2,200 square foot range. Carl’s read on that market is that well-built new construction out there should list in the $1.0M to $1.2M range today.

Run that against the $507/SF resale number: a 2,100 SF existing home would price around $1.06M. A new 2,100 SF home in the same range gets you everything in the right-hand column above for the same money.

The west side is a 7–8 mile drive across the valley. Carl put it well — that drive is a treasure to some people and a hindrance to others. If you’re in the “treasure” camp, this is where the build-vs-buy math works hardest in your favor, because the lots are still priced for the drive and the homes aren’t.

The Jackson-side wrinkle

Across the pass the calculation changes shape. Jackson Hole construction starts at $1,000 per square foot and goes up, and land is in a different universe again — but so is the existing inventory. Build-versus-buy in Teton County WY is usually decided by lot availability and review timelines rather than by cost.

Which is why a number of my clients run the hybrid: buy or build on the Idaho side and accept the drive. The Jackson Hole cost picture and the two markets compared directly.

The caveat (and it’s a real one)

This is October 2026 data. Teton Valley moves. A 14-month build means you’re pricing against a market that will shift before you close. That cuts both ways — it’s why we fix the price at design lock, so the only thing moving during your build is the resale market, not your contract.

I’ll update this post every quarter with fresh comps from Carl. If the numbers change, the post changes.

Want your own numbers?

The figures above are market-wide. Your lot, your plan, and your finish level set the real number — and we put that together in the schematic phase of the design agreement, not on a phone call.

Book a 15-minute planning call and we’ll tell you in that call whether building is the right move for your timeline. Sometimes the answer is “buy.” We’ll say so.

Frequently asked questions

Market data: Carl Struttmann, Compass Teton Valley, October 2026 CMA — Driggs/Tetonia sold comps. Carl on Instagram.

You found a plan online. It’s $1,800, it looks close to what you want, and the alternative is a custom design process that costs meaningfully more. It seems like an easy call.

Sometimes it is. But the savings are smaller than they look, and in Teton Valley there’s a specific reason that catches almost everyone.

The three paths

• Stock plan as-is. Buy a plan set from a plan house or designer and build it unchanged. Typically $1,000 to $2,500 for the set.
• Modified stock plan. Buy the set, then pay a designer to change it — move walls, resize the garage, flip the plan, redo the primary suite. Modification services commonly run $2,000 to $8,000 depending on how far you go.
• Fully custom. Designed from your lot, your program, and your sun and view angles. Sold as a design agreement with a fixed fee, quoted per project.

On paper the spread between path one and path three looks enormous. Then you go get a permit.

The catch: an online plan isn’t permit-ready here

Stock plans are drawn for a generic location and generic conditions. Teton Valley is neither. What a purchased plan set almost never includes, and what you will pay for regardless of which path you choose:

• Snow load engineering. We design to 60 to 100+ psf depending on where you are. A plan drawn for 30 psf has undersized rafters, beams, headers, and connections throughout. That isn’t a tweak — the structural design gets redone.
• A local engineer’s stamp. Required. The engineer stamping it has to actually engineer it, which means running the loads for your site.
• Foundation redesign for frost depth and your soils. Footing depth, frost walls, and what the soils report says about bearing. A slab detail from a warm climate is not transferable.
• Energy code compliance for this climate zone — assemblies, glazing ratios, and the compliance documentation.
• Site-specific plot plan — setbacks, septic and well separation, drainage, snow storage.
• Seismic and wind per the adopted code in your jurisdiction. Adopted codes by county.

Once you’ve paid for all of that, the real gap between a modified stock plan and a fully custom design is a lot narrower than the sticker suggested. You didn’t skip the engineering — you just bought the floor plan separately from it. What a plan set actually needs to contain here.

Does a stock plan lower construction cost?

Not by itself. Construction cost is driven by what’s in the drawing, not by who drew it.

The cost drivers, in rough order of impact:

1. Footprint complexity. Corners cost money. A simple rectangle frames faster, roofs cleaner, and leaks less than the same square footage broken into six bump-outs.
2. Roof geometry. Valleys, dormers, and intersecting pitches are the single most expensive thing on most plans — in labor, in flashing, and in snow country, in risk.
3. Structural spans and open volume. Great rooms with long clear spans and vaulted ceilings need engineered beams and specific floor and roof systems. TJI vs floor trusses.
4. Foundation type and site. Walkout basement on a slope versus slab on flat ground is a large swing.
5. Finish level. Two identical plans can differ by 40% on finishes alone.
6. Window and glass area. The views you came here for are the most expensive wall assembly on the house.

Where a stock plan does save construction money is indirect and real: plan houses sell what builds efficiently, so their plans tend to have simpler forms and standard dimensions. A custom design can absolutely be drawn that way too — a good designer working against a budget will — but a plan nobody constrained will happily produce a shape that costs 15% more to frame for no functional gain. More on what drives cost per square foot.

How much control do you actually get?

	Stock as-is	Modified stock	Fully custom
Floor plan layout	Fixed	Substantial control	Total
Orientation to views and sun	Whatever the lot allows	Can flip and rotate	Designed around it
Exterior style and materials	Limited	Good	Total
Ceiling heights and volume	Fixed	Possible, costs engineering	Total
Window sizes and placement	Fixed	Good	Total
Finishes, fixtures, cabinetry	Total	Total	Total
Fit to an odd or steep lot	Poor	Limited	Total

Note the bottom two rows. Finishes are fully yours on every path — that’s the part most people picture when they say “custom,” and it’s never the constraint. The constraint is the lot.

When a stock or modified plan is the right call

• Your lot is flat, rectangular, serviced, and doesn’t have one dominant view you’re organizing around.
• You found a plan that genuinely fits how you live, and the changes you want are modest.
• Budget is tight enough that design fee is the difference between building and not building.
• You want to move quickly and a design process would add months to your start.
• It’s not your forever house.

When fully custom earns it

• The lot is the reason you’re building here. Slope, a specific Teton view corridor, tree cover, or an awkward shape. A stock plan dropped on a view lot usually points the great room at the neighbor.
• You have a specific program. Multi-generational living, a real home office for someone who works from it every day, a mudroom sized for four kids and ski gear.
• Solar orientation and snow shedding matter to you. Where the sun hits in January and where the roof dumps snow relative to your doors and driveway are design decisions. Stock plans make them by accident.
• You’re at the top of this market. At the price point where buyers compare finish and design quality directly, a recognizable stock plan is a resale liability.
• You want the price to be real before you commit. A design process that ends in complete drawings and a finish specification is what makes a fixed construction price possible at all. How to get a real number before you sign.

The honest recommendation

For most people building a forever home on a Teton Valley lot they chose for the view, a modified stock plan is a false economy — you spend most of the design savings on engineering and modifications and still end up with a house that doesn’t quite fit the site.

For a flat lot, a straightforward program, and a budget that’s actually tight, a well-chosen plan modified by a designer who understands our snow loads is a perfectly good answer, and I’ll build it.

What I’d avoid entirely: buying a plan online, handing it to a builder, and assuming it’s ready to go. That is the version that costs money twice. How the design agreement works.

Frequently asked questions

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Send me the plan you found

Book a 15-minute planning call with the plan and your lot. I’ll tell you what it needs to be buildable here, and whether modifying it or starting fresh is the better use of your money.

— Bryce Swager, owner and lead builder, SwagerBuilds. Rigby, Idaho.

Related reading

• Do you need an architect in Teton Valley?
• How design-build works
• The hidden costs of building a custom home
• Building on your own lot in Idaho

Every per-square-foot number you have seen — mine included — describes construction. The building. What it costs to put a finished, weather-tight, code-compliant house on a prepared site.

It is not what it costs to get keys in your hand. The gap between those two numbers runs about 30 percent, and it is where most Idaho custom home budgets quietly break. Nothing in it is a secret. It is just that nobody puts it on the front page.

Here is the whole list, from 20 years of building in Teton Valley and Eastern Idaho.

What the construction number does and doesn’t include

My construction pricing starts at $400 per square foot of conditioned space on the Idaho side and goes up, and starts at $1,000 per square foot on the Jackson Hole and Wyoming side. Conditioned space only — I don’t pad the count with garage and covered porch footage to make the rate look better.

That covers foundation through final finish: framing, roof, windows, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, insulation, drywall, cabinets, tile, trim, paint, fixtures. It does not cover the land, getting the site buildable, getting services to it, the paper that makes it legal, the money that funds it, or anything outside the walls.

1. Site work — the biggest variable on the list

Two lots on the same street can differ by six figures here. Clearing, excavation, over-excavation if the soils report demands it, imported structural fill, rough and final grade, retaining, erosion control, and the driveway.

The Teton Valley specifics that move this number: cobble and river rock that slows every bucket, a high water table on the valley floor, slope on the bench lots, and driveways long enough to be their own project. A 600-foot gravel drive with a culvert and a turnaround is not a rounding error.

What protects you: a soils report and a real excavator walking the lot before you close on it, not after. More on building on your own lot.

2. Well, septic, and utility trenching

If your lot isn’t on municipal water and sewer, you are drilling a well and installing a septic system, and the well is a lottery ticket — you pay by the foot and nobody knows the depth until the drill stops. A conventional drain field and a pressure-dose or mound system are very different numbers, and which one you need is decided by a perc test, not by preference.

Then power. Trenching from the transformer, and a line extension fee from the utility if the transformer isn’t close. Propane tank and line. Fiber or conduit if you want it.

Real well and septic numbers for rural Idaho.

3. Soft costs — the paper that makes it legal

• Survey — boundary, topographic, and a plot plan for permit. Sometimes a stake-out before excavation.
• Soils and geotechnical report — required by most jurisdictions here and by every competent structural engineer.
• Structural engineering — stamped, and up here that means real snow-load design at 60 to 100+ psf. Not optional, not cheap, and not a place to shop on price.
• Design — a fixed design fee, quoted per project. This is the phase that produces the drawings and finish specification a builder needs to give you a price they will stand behind. How the design agreement works.
• Permits and impact fees — building permit, plumbing, electrical, mechanical, septic permit, driveway approach, and impact fees where the jurisdiction charges them. Fees and review timelines by county.
• HOA or design review — submittal fees, and in some Teton Valley subdivisions a refundable compliance deposit that is very much real money for 18 months.
• Energy compliance — blower door test and the documentation package.

4. The cost of the money

Almost nobody budgets this one and it is one of the largest.

• Construction loan interest. You pay interest on the drawn balance for the entire build — 14 to 18 months up here. It ramps as the balance grows, and on a seven-figure build it is a serious number.
• Loan origination, appraisal, inspections, and the construction-to-perm conversion.
• Builder’s risk insurance for the duration.
• Your current housing while you build. Rent or an existing mortgage running alongside the interest above.

This is also why schedule is a budget item, not just a convenience. Every month of delay costs interest. Financing a custom home in Teton Valley and how the draw schedule works.

5. Everything outside the walls

Landscape, irrigation, final grade and seed, fencing, patios and hardscape, exterior lighting, a shop or detached garage, snow storage that actually works. Landscape in particular is the line people defer, and deferring it in a snow country subdivision with a completion covenant sometimes isn’t allowed.

6. Furnishing it

Window coverings are the one that catches everyone. A house with a lot of glass — which is why you are building here — has a five-figure window covering bill, and motorized shades on high glass push that hard. Then furniture, rugs, art, beds, outdoor furniture, and a mattress in every room you just built.

Appliances belong in this conversation too. Confirm whether your builder’s number includes them, and at what level — an appliance package is a wide range depending on where you land.

7. The winter tax

Building in Teton Valley across a winter adds real line items: snow removal to keep the site working, temporary heat and ground thaw for concrete, frost protection, and reduced productivity in short cold days. It is manageable and often unavoidable given permit timing — it just needs to be in the number instead of showing up as a surprise in February. What actually pushes an Idaho build late.

Putting it together

Worked example on the Idaho side, illustrative and not a quote: a 2,500 SF home is roughly $1M of construction and lands near $1.3M all-in. That is the 35 percent end. Difficult site, long driveway, deep well, and a full landscape package push toward 50.

Cost group	In the per-SF number?	Typically how big
Construction (foundation to finish)	Yes	The base number
Land	No	Separate purchase
Site work, grade, driveway	No	Largest variable
Well, septic, utility trenching	No	Large on rural lots
Survey, soils, structural engineering	No	Moderate, unavoidable
Design	No	Fixed fee, quoted per project
Permits, impact and HOA fees	No	Varies sharply by county
Construction loan interest and fees	No	Large and often missed
Landscape, hardscape, fencing	No	Easily six figures
Window coverings, furnishings, appliances	Usually no	Large and always underestimated
Contingency	No	See below

Build your budget from the bottom of that table up, not from the per-SF number down. Full Teton Valley cost breakdown here.

How much contingency should you actually hold?

The honest answer is that it depends entirely on your contract type and how complete your drawings are — which is exactly why the generic “10 percent” advice is useless.

• Fixed price, complete drawings, zero allowances: 3–5%. There is almost nothing left to discover inside the contract, so your contingency is really just a budget for changes you decide to make.
• Fixed price with allowances: 10–15%. Every allowance is an unpriced line. Add up the allowance schedule and assume you land above each one, because you will.
• Cost-plus: 15–20%, minimum. The estimate is a forecast. Here’s how the two contract types differ.
• Site contingency, on top, until the foundation is in: 5%. This is the one nobody can contract away. Rock, water table, unsuitable soils, and a surprise from the county are discovered by digging.

Two rules about it that matter more than the percentage:

1. You hold it, not the builder. Contingency inside a builder’s contract price tends to get spent. Keep it in your own account and release it against signed change orders.
2. Your lender has to know about it. A construction loan sized to the contract with no contingency means an overage comes out of your pocket in cash, mid-build. Talk to your lender about contingency in the loan before you close.

What isn’t a hidden cost

Worth saying plainly: if you upgrade the range in month nine, that is not a hidden cost. That is a choice, priced and signed before the work happens. That’s what a change order is for.

The costs on this page are different. They are knowable in advance, and a builder who leaves them out of the conversation either doesn’t run a real budget process or is counting on the number looking better than the competition’s. This is exactly why three bids don’t compare.

Frequently asked questions

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Build the real budget first

Book a 15-minute planning call. Bring your lot and your rough square footage and we’ll walk the whole list — including the lines your lender is going to ask about.

— Bryce Swager, owner and lead builder, SwagerBuilds. Rigby, Idaho.

Related reading

• How much does a custom home cost in Idaho?
• Why custom home cost overruns happen
• Construction allowances explained
• Is a premium custom home builder worth it?

Everyone tells you to get three bids. Nobody tells you that the three numbers you get back are not describing the same house — which makes comparing them roughly as useful as comparing three grocery receipts without knowing what’s in the bags.

I’ve been building for 20 years and I’ve lost jobs to bids I knew would finish higher than mine. Sometimes the client called me 14 months later to say so. Here’s how to avoid being that client.

The spread is almost never about profit margin

When three bids come back 15–25% apart, the instinct is to assume the high builder is greedy. Occasionally true. Usually not.

In this market, we’re all buying lumber from the same yards, hiring from the same pool of framers and tile setters, and pulling permits from the same counties. Nobody has a secret 20% material discount. If the numbers are far apart, the scopes are far apart.

Four things create almost all of the spread:

1. Allowances. A dollar placeholder for something nobody has priced yet. Set them low and your bid looks great. Here’s how allowances actually work.
2. Exclusions. Site work, well and septic, driveway, retaining, landscape, utility trenching, engineering. Any one of them is five or six figures on a mountain lot.
3. Contract type. A cost-plus “estimate” and a fixed price are different species of number. One is a commitment. One is a forecast.
4. Drawing completeness. Nobody can price a house that isn’t fully drawn. Builders bidding off schematic drawings are guessing, and the guess is always optimistic.

What that looks like in numbers

Illustrative example, not a quote. Same 2,500 SF house, same Driggs lot, three builders.

Bid	Structure	Number on paper	Where it actually finishes
Builder A	Fixed price, heavy allowances, site work excluded	$875,000	~$1,180,000
Builder B	Cost-plus, 15% fee on an estimate	$940,000 est.	~$1,145,000
Builder C	Fixed after design lock, zero allowances, site work included	$1,050,000	$1,050,000

Builder A wins the job by $175,000 and finishes $130,000 above the builder who looked expensive. Builder B’s fee grew with the budget — that’s not misconduct, it’s how cost-plus is built. Builder C never moved because there was nothing left to discover.

That gap isn’t hypothetical. Custom builds routinely land 20–40% over their contract number, and it’s nearly always scope that was never nailed down. More on cost-plus vs fixed-price.

Level the bids before you compare them

“Leveling” is what commercial owners do as a matter of course and residential clients almost never do. You rewrite all three bids into the same format so you’re comparing the same house. Build one sheet with these rows and fill a column per builder:

• Site work — excavation, fill, grading, driveway, retaining
• Well, septic, and utility trenching (real numbers here)
• Foundation type and insulation package
• Framing package and floor system
• Window and door manufacturer and line — by name, not “quality windows”
• Roofing material and gauge
• Exterior cladding and water-resistive barrier
• HVAC type and whether radiant is included
• Cabinet allowance or actual cabinet quote
• Countertop, tile, plumbing fixture, lighting, appliance, and flooring dollars
• Interior doors, trim package, and paint
• Engineering, permits, and impact fees (by county)
• Landscape, irrigation, and final grade
• Builder fee or overhead and profit — stated as a number
• Contingency, and who controls it

Every blank cell is a future change order. When you fill the blanks at market rate, the three bids usually land within a few percent of each other — and the ranking flips.

Give all three builders the same package

You cannot level bids that came from different information. Before you ask anyone for a number, hand every builder the identical packet:

• Complete drawings — not schematics. Plans, elevations, sections, and a structural set.
• A written finish specification. Actual manufacturers and model numbers, not adjectives.
• Your survey, soils report, and any subdivision or HOA design requirements.
• A written statement of what you expect included: site work, utilities, landscape, appliances.
• The same deadline and the same format request.

Here’s the catch most owners hit: producing that packet is the design phase, and it costs money. Which is exactly why I sell design as its own agreement before I’ll price a build. Nobody can hand you a number they’ll stand behind on a house that hasn’t been drawn. A builder who gives you a firm price off a napkin sketch is telling you something about how the rest of the job will go. How the design agreement works.

What has to be in the construction contract

Once you’ve picked a builder, the bid becomes a contract — and this is where the protection actually lives. Read for these:

• Scope of work, incorporated by reference. The drawings and the finish spec named by date and revision number, attached as exhibits. If the spec isn’t attached, there is no scope.
• The price, and what makes it move. Fixed, cost-plus, or fixed-with-allowances — stated plainly, with every trigger for a price change listed.
• Allowance schedule. If there are allowances, every one itemized with its dollar figure. Mine is a short list because the selections are made before signing.
• Change order procedure. Written, priced, and signed before the work happens. Verbal approvals disallowed in writing. What good change orders look like.
• Draw schedule tied to completed work, not to the calendar. How draws work on an Idaho construction loan.
• Lien waivers with every draw. Conditional on progress payments, unconditional on final. This is what stops a sub who wasn’t paid from attaching your title. Mechanic’s liens in Idaho.
• Schedule, with substantial completion defined and weather and change-order delays handled explicitly.
• Insurance and license. General liability and builder’s risk limits, workers’ comp, and who carries which.
• Warranty terms and the punch list process. What a builder warranty covers in Idaho.
• Dispute resolution and termination. How disagreements get settled, what triggers termination on either side, and how the job gets valued and closed out if it happens.

Have a real estate or construction attorney read it. If you’re already an attorney, read the termination and lien-waiver clauses first — that’s where the asymmetry usually hides.

How many bids, and how to run it

Three is right. Two gives you no pattern. Five wastes weeks and gets you ignored — good builders in a small valley know when they’re one of five, and they’ll price high or pass.

1. Vet before you bid. Licensing, insurance, lien history, finished projects at your size, and reference calls. Use these 10 questions. A number from a builder you wouldn’t hire is noise.
2. Tell them they’re one of three. Serious builders respect it. It also tells you who negotiates against a competitor and who explains their own process.
3. Give the identical packet and the same deadline.
4. Level the bids. Fill the blanks at market rate.
5. Bring your questions back to each builder individually. Their answers matter more than the original number.

What does the cheap bid usually leave off the page?

The lowest bid is rarely cheaper. It is shorter. When one number comes in well under the others on the same plans, these twelve items are what tend to be missing, excluded, or sitting in an allowance that will not survive contact with your lot.

1. Excavation and site prep. Often listed as “by owner” or priced for a flat lot the builder has never seen.
2. Utility hookups. Power, gas and communications from the road to the house.
3. Septic or sewer. A permitted septic system is $25,000 to $75,000 on a rural lot. A bid that assumes city sewer on a well-and-septic lot is off by that much.
4. Well or water line. Same problem, same size.
5. Driveway. Many Teton Valley lots have 200 to 800 foot driveways. That is $30,000 to $120,000 depending on length and grade.
6. Engineering. Stamped structural, and in Teton County the snow-load engineering, often left for the owner to buy.
7. Permits and impact fees. $4,000 to $15,000 depending on the county, and additive.
8. Window package grade. A builder-grade vinyl package versus the big-glass package on your drawings is a $40,000 to $70,000 difference on a 2,500 square foot house.
9. Appliances. Frequently excluded entirely or carried at an allowance that buys the cheapest set in the showroom.
10. Gutters. Small line, routinely left off.
11. Landscaping. Final grade, topsoil, seed and the minimum your HOA requires before occupancy.
12. Final cleaning. Construction clean before you move in. Not glamorous, not free.

A SwagerBuilds construction contract carries every one of these as a priced line, with allowances at zero, because the selections are made during design. Before you compare bottom lines, check each bid for these twelve.

Four questions that expose a lowball

1. Is this fixed or an estimate — and if fixed, fixed as of what?
2. What is excluded from this number entirely?
3. List every allowance and the dollar figure behind it.
4. On your last three finished homes, what was the final price versus the original contract?

Question four sorts the field faster than anything else on this page. A builder who tracks it answers in ten seconds. A builder who doesn’t will tell you every job is different.

Red flags while you’re collecting bids

• A bid that arrives in two days. Nobody priced your house. They applied a square-foot rate and called it a bid.
• A number with no scope document behind it. A price on letterhead is not a bid.
• Pressure to sign before the drawings are done.
• A large deposit before mobilization. Deposits that fund the previous client’s job are how builds stall. Ask how they’re capitalized and whether they have the crew for your job.
• Refusing to name their subs. In a valley this small, you can call them.
• Undercutting a competitor’s number on the spot. If they can drop $40,000 in a phone call, the number was never real.

The short version

Get three bids. Just don’t compare them as written. Level them onto one sheet, fill every blank at market rate, and pick from the leveled numbers — then read the contract like the scope depends on it, because it does.

Related: is a premium custom home builder worth it?

Frequently asked questions

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Bring me the other two bids

Book a 15-minute planning call and bring what you’ve got. I’ll tell you what’s missing from each one — including when the honest answer is that another builder is the better fit for your project.

— Bryce Swager, owner and lead builder, SwagerBuilds. Rigby, Idaho. Custom homes across Teton Valley, Eastern Idaho, and Jackson Hole.