Has anyone built with City Core?

[CSMRX7]

Looking at several innercity builders and narrowing it down to make a final decision. We like City Core's business model, project management, architect and their focus, but wanted to hear feedback from anyone on the forum that either has built with them or lives in a home built by them.

[dannie]

Long story short, city core made it into our top 3 for a new build. Ended up not justifying their fees when it's something we can do ourselves. However, if you have an option for architect, Ed Gallagher does their extreme high end stuff. We used him for ours and I can honestly say, he was worth every single penny. Absolutely outstanding to work with. We're just starting the framing, and he's been a great support when we need it.

[wtf im nameless]

Some of my clients have worked with them before. They are one of the larger custom builders in the city, I was told they build around 50 homes per year. I can't speak about the quality of every home they build, but they did a great job for my last client who built with them. The last site supe I worked with was fantastic, he really knew his stuff and had a genuine concern for the people whom he was building the home for. If you are interested I'd be happy to put you in touch with him directly.

What other builders are you considering? I do upper scale home theatre and automation and have worked with, or had co-workers that worked with a lot of the custom builders in and around Calgary.

[CSMRX7]

We also considered Mission, Empire, HouseBrand, and Rock Creek. We have never built a home and are concerned about insuring we build a home that does build equity and at some point would be very sellable, we found City Core to be the only custom builder that we looked at that was focused on providing their customers with resale. I found Mission and Empire to be a bit more "Yes Men" and HouseBrand to be to singularly focused on one style and not very open to other ideas. Rock Creek we found incredibly unorganized, which for my wife, who is a project manager, was a deal breaker in itself.

We would love to be our own super, but both my wife and I have too many work commitments to be able to do that right now. Hopefully we can learn a lot from this build and then possibly do it ourselves in the the future.

Dannie, do you find your costs are close to the discounted ones that City Core proposed? They say that their cost+fees is likely close to what our costs would be if we built by ourselves do to their discounts.

[dannie]

Before the framers, we were sitting around 13% less than what the builders quoted. I can get the most up to date numbers tomorrow. By the end of the project, we're hoping to be around 17% less. That's the goal anyways... Whether it happens or not... We will see :)

[wtf im nameless]

I've heard good things about Mission, one of my old co-workers used to work with them and always spoke very highly of them.

Empire builds very nice looking homes, but they're tied down to another technology provider so I've never seen one of their homes being built first hand.

I'm not familiar with the other two you mentioned.

If you'd like me to put you in touch with my contact at City Core just let me know and I'll have him call you.

[Tomaz]

In short, they do some awesome work.

See if they will give you some addresses of current and past projects for you to check out.

I don't have any personal experience with the other builders you mentioned, sorry.

Some other names that impressed me when doing my rounds:

Stephen's Fine Homes
Wolf Custom Homes
McKinley Masters
Jaymack Custom Homes

Remember, have fun shopping!

[you&me]

Originally posted by Tomaz
In short, they do some awesome work.

See if they will give you some addresses of current and past projects for you to check out.

I don't have any personal experience with the other builders you mentioned, sorry.

Some other names that impressed me when doing my rounds:

Stephen's Fine Homes
Wolf Custom Homes
McKinley Masters
Jaymack Custom Homes

Remember, have fun shopping!

Stephens appears to be single-handedly trying to lower the aggregate look of new home construction in the Marda Loop area. I shudder every time I see one of their signs on a cleared lot.

I've also heard mixed reviews about City Core. Plenty of very happy clients and a few very unhappy ones... I'll see if I can get some details.

[JordanLotoski]

check pm

Im currently under contract to build with Laratta homes, they have designed me a very modern home. I was thinking about starting a build thread to show my process.

They have been amazing so far. We interviewed 5 builders and they seem to have stood out as I liked that Iam dealing with the owners of the company not their lackys.