Design-Build Services

Better Homes Start With a Better Process

A better process produces better homes, ones that perform at a higher level, cost less to own, and last longer. That's what we're building toward on every project.

How We Work

At FS Builders, design and construction happen under one roof. The people designing your home are the same people building it, so the decisions made during design are grounded in real construction costs and real field experience. That continuity is what keeps a project on budget and on schedule, and it's what makes design-build a better process for most custom home clients.

If you're already working with an architect, we're not going to turn you away. We offer a consulting role during the design phase, constructability review, envelope design input, and cost feedback as the design develops. Getting us involved early, before plans are finalized, is where that relationship pays off most. The performance decisions that determine how a home feels and what it costs to run get made during design, not during construction.

Either way, once we're building, you get the same team, the same process, and the same commitment to how the home performs.

How We Price It

Before we break ground, we go through a thorough preconstruction process where we bid the project out to our subs and vendors based on your specific plans and selections. That gives us real, current pricing, not a guess, and from that we build a detailed project budget. That budget is what we manage to throughout the build.

Cost-plus contracting is standard practice for custom home builders, and for good reason. Custom homes have too many variables to price accurately with a lump sum bid upfront without padding the number significantly to cover the unknowns. What sets our model apart is the fee structure. We charge a fixed contractor fee, agreed on before construction starts. That fee doesn't go up if the project runs over budget. In a cost-plus percentage arrangement, the contractor's fee grows as project costs grow, meaning the builder makes more money as the project gets more expensive. We don't think that's the right incentive structure. Our fee is locked in for the life of the project as long as the scope doesn't change. If costs come in under budget, you keep the difference. If they run over, we're not benefiting from it.

You see every dollar. Our fee is separate and transparent. That's the model.

Built for Performance

We work with clients who care about how their home performs, not just how it looks. Every project we take on is guided by high-performance building science principles, airtightness, proper ventilation, thermal efficiency, and moisture management, because those things determine how comfortable, healthy, and cheap to run a home is for the next 50 years.

Not every client needs to pursue Passive House certification, and that's fine. But if that's a goal, we're one of the few contractors in Western NC with a CPHC, Certified Passive House Consultant, in-house. We can consult on the design, model the energy performance, and build to certification standards ourselves, without bringing in an outside consultant.

If your priorities include building a home that performs well beyond code, we're probably a good fit. If you're looking for the lowest bid, we're probably not.