Choosing a Contractor · September 17, 2026 · 10 min read

How to Choose a Custom Home Builder in BC: A Vetting Checklist

Two of the eight checks below can be done before you meet anybody, and they eliminate more unsuitable builders than every portfolio review put together: confirm the licence, and confirm the warranty is enrolled before the permit. Both are legal requirements for a new home in British Columbia, both are verifiable from public records, and neither depends on your judgement of a photograph. This is a practical vetting sequence for a new build — the licence, the warranty, the money, the holdback, the crew, the bids and the references — written as a checklist because that is the order the work actually goes in. If you are still deciding whether to build new at all, our custom home building service page and our guide to building new versus renovating come before this one.

Key takeaway. Check two things first: that the builder holds a BC Housing residential builder licence, and that home warranty insurance is enrolled before the building permit — BC Housing requires enrolment before a permit can be issued. Then hold the 10% Builders Lien Act holdback for 55 days, and make every bidder price one written scope with a stated exclusions list.

Step 1: Confirm They Are Licensed to Build Your Home

The Homeowner Protection Act and its regulations require that all new homes in BC be built by a licensed residential builder and covered by home warranty insurance, unless specifically excluded. The licence is administered by BC Housing.

What to do:

1. Ask for the legal company name, not the trading name. The licence is attached to the entity.
2. Check it against BC Housing's public register of licensed residential builders.
3. Confirm the licence is current and covers the class of work you are asking for.
4. Ask how long the entity has held the licence. A licence issued last month attached to a company that presents a fifteen-year portfolio is a question worth asking out loud.

One thing to understand clearly, because it is where most confusion lives: this requirement is about new homes. Renovation work does not carry the same licensing and warranty obligation. So a builder who is entirely legitimate on renovations may not be licensed to build you a house, and "we've been building here for twenty years" is not a substitute for the register entry.

Step 2: Confirm the Warranty Before the Permit

BC Housing states the sequence without ambiguity: you need to enrol a home in home warranty insurance before you can get a building permit and start construction.

That single sentence is a powerful test. If a builder describes the warranty as paperwork to be handled once construction is underway, they have the order wrong, and the order is not negotiable.

The coverage standard is 2-5-10:

What to ask for: the name of the warranty provider, and the policy or enrolment number for your specific address once it exists. Ask to see the enrolment before you release a deposit against the permit stage. The builder pays for the coverage and the cost sits inside the contract price — you should not be invoiced a separate premium.

Step 3: Read the Portfolio for Your Build, Not for the Photographs

Every builder's portfolio is their best work, photographed well, usually by the same handful of photographers. It tells you very little on its own. Three questions make it useful.

Which of these did you build, and in what role? Design coordination, construction management and general contracting are different jobs with different risk. Ask which one they held on the projects you are being shown.

Which of these is closest to mine, and why? Closest means site conditions, storeys, structural system and finish level — not style. A flat lot in the Fraser Valley and a sloped lot on the North Shore are different builds with the same elevation drawing.

Where is the one that went wrong? Every builder with a real history has a job with a dispute, a delay or a failed inspection. A builder who says there has never been one is either new or not being straight with you. What you want is the story of how it was resolved.

Step 4: Ask How the Contract Handles Money

A custom home contract is mostly a document about money moving under uncertainty. Four things to establish:

Fixed price, cost plus, or fixed price with allowances? Most custom homes are the third, and that is fine — but it means the allowances are the real price. Get them itemised with amounts. An unstated allowance is how a contract price becomes a starting price.

Is the payment schedule tied to milestones or to dates? Milestones. Payment on a date regardless of progress transfers all the schedule risk to you.

What is the change order process? Who can authorise one, how it is priced, and whether work can proceed before you have signed. Our guide to how contractors price a commercial project sets out the mechanics of allowances, contingency and change orders in more detail — the machinery is the same on a house.

Where does the contingency sit, and whose is it? A contingency held by the builder and a contingency held by you behave very differently when something is found in the ground.

Step 5: Understand the Holdback You Are Required to Keep

This is the step most homeowners do not know exists, and it is statutory.

The Builders Lien Act requires a 10% holdback on payments to the prime contractor, and the same percentage on payments to subcontractors and sub-subcontractors down the chain. The holdback is retained for 55 days, running from the earlier of:

• issuance of the certificate of completion for the contract or subcontract, or
• completion, abandonment or termination of the head contract.

The arithmetic of that 55 days is worth knowing: 45 days is the window in which a subcontractor can file a lien, and the remaining 10 days is buffer for Land Title Office processing and for confirming the title is still clear.

What this means practically:

• The holdback is not a negotiating tactic or a quality retention. It is a legal mechanism that protects you from being liened by a subcontractor your builder did not pay.
• A builder who asks you to waive it, or to release it at substantial completion rather than after the 55 days, is asking you to take on a risk the Act placed with them.
• Your contract should state the holdback explicitly, name what triggers the clock, and name who issues the certificate of completion.

Step 6: Ask Who Is Actually Going to Be on Your Site

You are buying supervision as much as construction. The question is simple and the answer is revealing.

• Who is the site supervisor, and how many other projects will they be running while mine is open?
• Is the framing crew employed or subcontracted, and have you used them before?
• Who is on site on an ordinary Tuesday, and who do I call when nobody is?
• Can I meet the supervisor before I sign?

The person who sells you the house is frequently not the person who builds it. That is normal. What is not normal is being unable to find out who will.

Two paper checks belong here as well: a current WorkSafeBC clearance letter for the company, and proof of general liability insurance with the coverage limit stated. Both are routine requests and both take a builder minutes to produce.

Step 7: Compare Bids That Priced the Same House

Three bids on three different assumptions is not a comparison, it is a lottery. The fix is entirely on your side of the table.

Issue one written scope to every bidder. Drawings plus a finish schedule plus stated allowances. If you let each builder set their own allowance for cabinetry, you will receive three prices for three kitchens.

Require an exclusions list from every bid. This is the single most useful document in the set. On a custom home the recurring exclusions are site servicing connections, rock excavation, retaining walls, landscaping, appliances, window coverings, and permit and development fees.

Ask each bid what it assumed about the ground. Excavation and servicing are where bids diverge most on a Lower Mainland lot, because one builder priced a geotechnical report they had read and another priced a guess.

Do not take the lowest number without reading the two above. The cheapest bid is usually the one that excluded the most, and the gap turns up later as change orders on work that was always going to be necessary.

Step 8: Check the References You Were Not Given

Given references are curated. That does not make them useless — ask them specific questions — but the informative calls are the ones you find yourself.

Ask given references these four: Did the final price match the contract, and if not, why? Did the schedule hold? How were deficiencies handled after you moved in? Would you use the same site supervisor again?

Then find the ones you were not given. Ask the builder for the addresses of two completed homes in your municipality and knock on the doors. Ask a local building official which builders submit complete applications — they will not rank anybody, but they will often tell you who they rarely have to send back. If the builder is doing new homes at volume, some of their past addresses are a matter of public permit record.

And ask a supplier. A cabinet or window supplier in the Lower Mainland knows precisely which builders pay on time. A builder who pays their suppliers slowly is a builder whose schedule will slip for reasons that have nothing to do with your house.

Conclusion

Vetting a custom home builder in BC is unusually tractable, because two of the most important checks are matters of public record rather than judgement: the residential builder licence, and home warranty insurance enrolled before the permit is issued. Do those first and the field narrows honestly. Then make the money mechanics explicit — itemised allowances, milestone payments, a named change order process, and the 10% holdback for 55 days written into the contract rather than left to the Act. Then meet the supervisor. We build ground-up homes across White Rock, Surrey, Langley and the wider Lower Mainland, and the most useful hour in this process is the one spent walking a lot with somebody who will tell you what the ground is going to cost before you own it.