About the Director
Mark Smith
Email: Mark@OwnerBuilderBook.com
Mr. Smith is President of The Consensus Group, an independent publishing firm. He is author of
The Owner-Builder Book: How You Can Save More Than $100,000 In The Construction of Your Custom Home. Along with his wife Elaine, Smith managed the construction of the couple's Provo, Utah home at a savings of nearly $180,000. Formerly the Vice President of a commercial construction firm in Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Smith had no previous residential construction experience before building the Provo home. His book combines professional management and commercial planning techniques with home management ideas to effect major construction savings for even the inexperienced homeowner.
Smith is a 1977 graduate of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business.
Product Description
The biggest bugaboo of owner-builders can be really easy and satisfying building a spreadsheet budget to control your project. Here we show you how to do your spreadsheet in detail. Start with our free budget spreadsheet template downloadable at our Download Gallery in the Bookstore at OwnerBuilderBook.com. We provide you with a tutorial on developing your construction budget on a spreadsheet. Then, using the spreadsheet template, we demo how to build it line by line on computer. It's amazingly simple, and will take only a few minutes to develop. That spreadsheet will guide your new house, or remodel or addition project and save you lots of money. We estimate that the spreadsheet budget alone will save you 5% of construction costs. It's that magical! You will gain confidence using a spreadsheet to plan and control your project. Your cost to build doesn t have to be a mystery!
Meet a couple who got good at budgeting and who used creative bartering to save a ton on their home. We will tour their new house and listen to their brilliant suggestions to save money when you build. They should know they saved more than 50% of the value of their home through owner-building on a budget. But they didn't skimp on anything. Check out the high-end features and conveniences in their custom home.
Also includes a $1,000 Idea by Mark Smith, author of
The Owner-Builder Book.
