Tips & Traps When Building Your Home

Book excerpt: Leading real-estate author Robert Irwin provides home builders with valuable money-saving tips to building a home from the ground up in Tips & Traps When Building Your Home. Featuring a self-test to determine whether the reader is more suited to hiring it all out or doing some of it alone, this user-friendly guide outlines the perilous traps that often come with building your own home. Irwin helps readers determine whether or not to hire out the entire process or whether to act as the primary contractor. Once that is decided, Irwin then helps builders determine: How building and contracting effects home-owners' insurance Whether or not to hire an architect If building plans need to be presented to the local zoning board Contractors' and builders' adherence to electrical codes, sewage codes, and occupancy codes