A clear-eyed comparison of how a custom home of consequence is built — what a general contract conceals, what the agency model makes visible, and what an efficient house costs to run over twenty years. The figures are illustrative; the principle is not.
One company signs every trade agreement and hands you a single price. Margin, contingency and the true cost of the work sit inside it, unseen. You are shown the total; never the parts.
You hold each trade contract; the practice holds none. Work is tendered competitively, recommended, coordinated and supervised. Because we earn nothing from the trades, nothing is marked up and nothing is hidden. You pay one transparent fee, agreed in advance.
Nothing is marked up. Nothing is hidden.
A management fee is not free, and we never pretend otherwise. The advantage is not that the fee is smaller than a builder's margin — it is that four things work in your favour at once, and all of them are visible.
A general contractor marks up every sub-trade and every material. The practice does not — the trades' prices reach you intact.
Each scope is tendered on a defined basis and awarded on a like-for-like comparison — not handed to a preferred sub at a price you never test.
Most overruns live not in the building but in undisciplined change. Nothing of consequence proceeds without your written authorisation.
Every contract, invoice, warranty — and the tax position that follows from holding them directly — stays in your own name.
Illustrative only. A general contractor's blended overhead-and-profit on a custom home typically runs 12–18% of cost; on a $4M build that is roughly $480,000–$720,000 embedded in a single number. Under the agency model you pay one transparent management fee while the trade costs are competitively tendered and visible — the comparison is a known fee against an unknown, embedded margin, with competitive pricing and change discipline besides.
An insulated-concrete envelope, ground-source geothermal and on-site solar are designed together, not added on. A house of this kind is engineered to draw a small fraction of a conventional home's energy — and, with battery storage, to carry its essential systems when the grid or the gas supply fails.
Illustrative. Modelled on a large custom home: conventional energy of roughly $7,000 a year, reduced by up to 80% to save about $5,600 a year. Actual savings vary with design, occupancy and energy prices, and may be lower than modelled. Figures current as of June 2026.
A point of candour. At this scale the efficiency premium does not pay for itself quickly — and for a house like this, that was never the point. What it buys is a quieter, cleaner, draught-free home that holds its comfort through a power cut and a Canadian winter, and an operating cost that stays low while energy prices climb. The saving is the dividend, not the reason.
Every figure here is illustrative. In a fixed-fee feasibility study we model your land, your design and current prices — and show you the comparison in your own numbers.
Begin the conversationIllustrative only — not a quote and not financial advice. Cost-premium ranges reflect CHBA and Ontario industry studies; energy figures reflect Ontario household data. Figures current as of June 2026 and re-verified at engagement. See our methodology & sources.
