Criteria for choosing a company for the construction of turnkey houses and search tips

Building a turnkey house for those with an unlimited budget is not difficult.
It is enough for them to clearly state their wishes. But for all this to become possible, it is necessary to find conscientious builders.

In the article we will share information on what to look for when searching, what sources will help you find specialists, as well as the cost of work and what you should be wary of when hiring workers for a turnkey house.

What does it mean?

In the Regulations and SNiP, the concept of “turnkey house” does not have an unambiguous, legally formulated term.

It could be:

• A box of a house without finishing and communications.
• House with communications and fine finishing.
• Fully furnished house.
• With installation of fire and security alarms.
• The residential building, garage, gates and site fencing are controlled using the “smart home” system.

For the same understanding of the content of this project by the customer and the contractor, the package and cost of services that are included in the construction of a turnkey house must be clearly stated in the contract.

Automation or “manual” management accounting?

Management accounting and financial planning in construction should be automated.

But let’s try to consider the opposite using an example: a construction organization carries out business processes (such as purchasing materials, monitoring the timing of work, and any others) “manually.” As soon as the situation in production or with the construction customer changes, the company’s employees change the terms of the agreements regarding money, resources, and time frames.

It is impossible to do without adjusting budgets and financial plans, new agreements on contract parameters. And all this must be done as quickly as possible. Correctly changing deadlines, recalculating indicators and collecting up-to-date data “with your own hands” is not easy. Whereas the program can handle this quickly and without errors.

Benefits of the service for the customer

The customer, by purchasing and formalizing his requirements with the construction company in an agreement, acquires the following advantages:

• 
  The construction company undertakes most of the communication with suppliers of materials, equipment and personnel. The customer, retaining control functions over the stages of construction, does not fall out of his life.

• The contractor, seeking the next tranche, completes the work on time and presents a qualitatively completed stage. Construction of the house is completed at the scheduled time.
• When working with one company, it is easier to demand fulfillment of guarantees in accordance with Art. 724 and Art. 756 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, rather than looking for negligent performers who carried out the previous stages of construction and trying to force them to eliminate shortcomings.

How to choose a company?

Before you start searching for a company and forming an initial long list of 20-30 applicants, formulate for yourself and write down the parameters of your dream home:

• Appearance, functionality, area and number of floors of a country house.
• Wall material and construction technology.
• Heating options and supply of water and electricity.
• Acceptable budget for building a house.

The decisions made on these issues will allow for a deeper study of the technology of building a house from specific materials. Studying the Regulations, SNIP and nuances on the forums will allow you to create a list of questions that you need to ask builders and know the correct answers to them.

Knowing the required work and its cost will allow you to weed out intermediaries and decide on a short list of companies from 2-3 options.

For the final choice, the following factors should be taken into account:

• Specialization of a company or team in house materials. Those who have their own production of building materials have preference.
• Time on market and reputation.
• Is it possible to visit the facilities they are building?

A visit to structures under construction can influence the final decision on the contractor and say a lot about:

1. production culture;
2. professionalism of workers;
3. compliance with technology and safety precautions.

Composition and goals of financial planning in a construction company

Financial planning is necessary for construction companies to:

• Form a base in various areas for assessing the effectiveness of the company’s activities;
• Execute activity plans in a timely manner;
• Carry out intra-organizational coordination of actions towards the set goals;
• Correctly plan the work of the organization at the moment;
• Analyze and calculate future expenses by period.

Construction budgeting is specific. If we take, for example, budgeting in the segment of trade or production of goods, then the significant factors here will be external restrictions - demand, consumer behavior, supply volumes, current market capacity. After analyzing such data, the specialist will be able to develop budgets: administrative expenses, salaries, commercial expenses, sales, production, etc.

The specifics (technical nuances, duration of project implementation, etc.) of the area we are considering are such that:

• The construction budget becomes primary. Those. project cost estimate with details by type of work;
• It will not be possible to build a budgeting process using the sales budget as a basis. The sales plan cannot affect the building construction cycle. Moreover, since the cost of square meters in a finished high-rise building is an order of magnitude higher than, for example, at the stage of digging a foundation pit, you need to sell only that number of “squares” that will allow you to finance construction at further stages.

The profits and expenses of construction organizations and those investing in them are inextricably linked with the implementation of projects. Taking this into account, the “base” of the budget of the entire company contains the budgets of individual projects, which, in turn, consist of the total budgets of the departments involved in the projects.

Accordingly, budgeting in the construction industry is “double” - for the entire business and project-based. Project budgets must be divided into annual, quarterly and monthly, taking into account the frequency of reconciliation of actual and planned information.

The project budget should be developed using a top-down system, i.e. assessing possible financial results and counting on the fact that the document drawn up will subsequently become the law of the organization.

Operating budgets, required to oversee the implementation of projects, are formed taking into account the parameters of certain agreements signed with suppliers and contractors, using a bottom-up system. It is extremely important to ensure that both types of approved budgets are consistent with each other.

Real information about the implementation of project operating budgets is obtained using official work acceptance certificates. Therefore, not only direct signing, but also quick recording of the data of such documents is extremely important. In the same way (as agreements for the “purchase and sale” of real estate are signed and information about transactions becomes available), the profit of the construction enterprise is recognized.

Where to look for cottage builders?

The basis for the successful construction of a “turnkey house” is the right choice of a company that can turn wishes into a concrete plan and implement it for the agreed finances. Sparing effort in this search is more expensive for yourself.

Sources of information are:

1. 
   Popular rumor . Friends, relatives, and neighbors can tell you a lot about developers working in your area. However, not every neighbor will tell you about their own mistakes when hiring builders. A valuable source of offline information is a real estate agent you know. They know the builders in your area better than the tax office and can make comprehensive recommendations.

2. Visiting exhibitions and studying brochures of large companies . Firms with a history of working in the market have a reputation and will have a solid contract and warranty promises. They are expensive and are already included in the price of services. However, having many orders and powerful legal support, large companies will not rush to eliminate deficiencies in 2-3 days.
3. Studying offers on Avito and message boards. Having a manual with questions and answers on the design of your house, you can, by calling 30-40 advertisements on the sites avito.ru and youla.ru, cut off a huge layer of intermediaries on these exchanges. By assessing the manner of communication, comparing prices for services and receiving the correct answers, you can form a shortlist of 2-3 performers to make the final choice.
4. Websites of construction companies in your region . Organizations with a substantial advertising budget usually appear on the first three pages of search engine results. Promotion of their sites is well paid and included in the price of services; by contacting them, skeptically studying reviews on the Internet, you can understand a lot about such companies. Medium-sized companies are found on the fourth pages of search results. Such organizations are still building their reputation and developing a customer base. As a rule, they are not infected with snobbery, and the customer has a real opportunity to receive high quality services at a relatively low price.
5. Internet forums and conferences. An amateur has to study many topics and questions about building his own house in order to avoid errors and defects or find options for eliminating them. One of the most useful for this is the forum house.

Most of the visitors on such forums communicate. In addition to new customers, these are already affected users of houses with professional builders.

For a person who is far from construction, communication will allow him to understand the nuances of technology, formulate a personal methodology for questions, and understand what the correct answers to them should be. Active work in such forums can also form a short list of contractors.

Correctly posed construction questions from a professional inspire respect for the customer and weed out would-be builders before negotiations begin. Knowing the correct answers by the customer allows him to assess the level of competence of the contractor and the price level for each stage of construction, as well as when, at what stages and what must be controlled.

Register your business

The legal model of a construction business depends on human resources and the scope of work. If you plan to work alone or with a small team and perform one type of work, open an individual entrepreneur. A simplified “income minus expenses” system is suitable as a tax regime: you can take into account the costs of building materials and wages of employees when calculating the tax base.

If you plan to provide a full cycle of construction services, open an LLC and choose a general taxation system. You will be able to deduct VAT and reduce the tax base for income tax due to expenses on construction materials and employee salaries.

You can register an individual entrepreneur or LLC with one founder for free without visiting the tax office. To do this, leave a request on the SberBusiness website, go to the nearest branch and sign the documents. And if you have a foreign passport and a smartphone with NFC function, you don’t even have to visit the bank. It will take only 30 minutes to fill out the application. After 5 working days, the company will be registered, and you will receive a Unified State Register of Legal Entities entry sheet by email.

In some areas of construction, it is obligatory to be a member of a self-regulatory organization (SRO). Membership in an SRO guarantees your customers that in the event of a violation of the contract, they will receive monetary compensation. You need to join an SRO if you work in the following areas:

• construction of buildings higher than three floors;
• construction of objects more than 15 meters high;
• construction of bridges, subways, underground mines, highways;
• installation of reinforced concrete and metal structures;
• major repairs of railways;
• work at industrial facilities in the oil and gas industry.

To join an SRO, find a suitable organization in the state register and pay the entrance fee. Its size depends on the area of ​​activity and the size of the compensation fund. The average contribution starts from 70 - 100 thousand rubles.

Top 10 construction companies

The companies that offered and were included in the ratings under various company numbers are summarized in Table 1.

Prices for services

It is difficult to estimate the actual cost of construction services due to the pandemic. It is difficult to understand which companies remained only as sites on the Internet, but actually stopped.

The cost of building a turnkey house in large cities is determined by the following factors:

• 
  Complexity of the terrain and house design.

• Proximity to the city center.
• Price and availability of basic materials.
• Service package.
• Availability of energy resources, water and sewerage.
• Availability of contractors capable of performing this task.

The average price in the Russian Federation for 1 m2 of a turnkey house is from 20 thousand rubles.

Possible risks for the customer

The work for the customer only begins after a carefully drawn up contract. There comes a need to accept such work as:

• Foundation
• Walls
• Exterior finishing, insulation and ventilation.
• Interior decoration, windows and doors.
• Connection of communications, installation of heating, water supply, sewerage.
• Design of the house area and fence.

The phased acceptance listed above allows us to reduce the homeowner’s risks from violating the technology for performing specific work. Omissions and negligence in the initial stages can be masked by subsequent work, but during the operation of the house they will appear.

You need to know how these services should be performed according to the project and there will be fewer problems.

Each builder or company has its own suppliers of building materials. Bound by mutual interests, they may try to increase their profits from construction by reducing the quality of basic materials. To reduce this risk, the homeowner needs to know who produces the main materials.

The best option is a specialized company for the construction of a certain type of house (stone, wooden, etc.) with its own production of basic components.

Without the owner's supervision and correctly completed construction stages, the final result may not please even the most conscientious company.

Construction budget planning and execution control

In Russia, for budgeting and financial planning they often use:

• Software without taking into account the specifics of the industry;
• Electronic means of recording financial data;
• "Antediluvian" virtual tables.

In other words, attempts are being made to structure the business in terms of finances. But a significant disadvantage of all the tools listed and similar ones is that in reality the help from them is minimal.

For example: spreadsheets of financial departments, “separated” from the information of the contractual department and the production and technical department, lose their relevance in the shortest possible time. This means providing timely and dynamic information about changes in the parameters of agreements and, for example, updating deadlines. Without such data, it is quite problematic to make thoughtful decisions and draw conclusions correctly.

Specialized automation programs operate in a completely different way: they provide quick assistance in developing further plans and demonstrate facts, comparing them with plans.