Looking to connect with Waco-area investors

[Shannon Stoneback]

Any Waco or central Texas investors have experience working with Grace Contracting for GC'ing a project?  Is it standard practice for the GC to request a $5k deposit to provide bid, design plans, etc on a new build?  Any general tips for doing a new build out of state?

I'm a rookie, my first deal.  I can't figure out if its worth it to do the construction because I don't have an estimate on pricing. 

[Joseph Cacciapaglia]

I don't get to Waco often, and I've never worked with Grace Contracting, but in general, I've never paid a contractor to provide a bid on a new build. I've only worked on a couple though. I do typically have the plans already drawn up by an architect, and they make their bid based on that. When you mention the "design plans" it makes me wonder if you're skipping that step, or asking the contractor to provide that service. I just looked up Grace Contracting, and it looks like they're a design/build firm. I've always used a separate GC and architect, so I'm not sure, but it makes sense to me that they need to charge for the design work before they can price the project.

Also, I have to mention that doing an out of state new build as your first deal scares me a bit. My first new build I visited the construction site about once a week. I had tons of problems with it, and I believe if I had been there more often many of those problems would have been avoided. Do you have a plan for monitoring the progress? If not, I'd suggest hiring a third party to go and take video on a regular basis.

How did you decide on this particular strategy?