Three Ways New Home Builders Can Minimize Contractor Labor Costs

When building a new home, one of the most costly expenses you have to deal with is the wages for the building contractors. If you are not careful, it is pretty easy for the labor cost to overwhelm you. In some instances, some people have been forced to halt the construction of their new homes when they run out of money to cover the labor costs of the construction workers.

As a result, it is essential to try as much as possible to minimize the amount of labor costs you pay your contractors without compromising the quality of work. With that said, here are three ways new home builders can minimize the amount of money they pay contractors for labor.

Compare Contractor Wages

One of the main mistakes new home builders make when choosing building contractors is failing to compare the wages of different construction companies. Instead, they usually pick the first company they come across without considering cost. On average, construction builders/contractors earn between $11 and $26 an hour, with the national average rate coming to around $15 an hour. You can save some money on labor costs by choosing a reasonably priced building contractor.

For instance, suppose you have company A charging $20/hr and company B charging $15/hr. If you opt for company B instead of company A, you get to save $5 per hour for every builder you hire. $5 may seem negligible, but if you have about twenty builders working for you, that translates to saving a total of $100 an hour. Thus, if the construction project goes on for some months, you could easily end up saving tens of thousands of dollars in contractor labor costs.

Use Ready Mix- Concrete

Another common mistake that new home builders make is opting to use site-mixed concrete instead of ready-mix concrete. Site-mixed concrete leads to a lot of time wasting because the builders have to stop working and wait for the concrete to be prepared. 

Nonetheless, you still pay the contractors for the hours they spent waiting for the concrete to get mixed. Additionally, waiting for the concrete to get mixed only prolongs the construction, and thus, your new home may take longer to complete. The longer the construction takes, the more money you pay towards labor costs.

However, ready-mix concrete gets delivered to the construction site ready to be poured. Thus, there is no need for contractors to stop building to wait for the concrete to get prepared. You can even schedule the ready-mix concrete to get delivered in a timely fashion to ensure no time gets wasted waiting for the delivery to arrive. As a result, you don't get billed for hours spent waiting for the concrete to arrive.

Additionally, because there is minimal time wastage, the construction of your new home moves along much faster. Less construction time means fewer billed hours. Thus, you get to save a significant amount of money on labor costs by eliminating time wastage by utilizing ready-mix concrete instead of site-mixed concrete.

Have Materials Readily Available

Like in the above scenario, if the building materials are not readily available for the builders, a lot of time will be wasted waiting for the materials to be delivered. However, because the builders reported for work, any time wasted still gets billed at the end of the day, significantly contributing to higher labor costs.

Thus, to avoid such a scenario, it is advisable to ensure all the materials required get stored at the site. This way, as soon as the contractors arrive at the construction site, they have everything they need at their disposal and can commence work immediately. Therefore you won't have to pay labor for hours wasted waiting for building materials to get delivered.

Contact new home builders in your area to learn more.