Process

12 Questions to Ask Before Signing a Custom Home Contract in Burnaby and BC

April 5, 2026Sanj Aggarwal9 min read

Most Burnaby owners ask three or four of these in their builder interviews. The other eight are where projects actually break. Bring this list to every builder you interview.

What questions should you ask a custom home builder before signing?

Before signing a custom home contract, ask who manages your project daily, what the contract includes and excludes, how scope changes are priced, who holds the BC Housing licence, how warranty issues are handled, and how the builder communicates during construction. These questions reveal operational quality that quotes never show.

Most Burnaby owners ask three or four of these in their builder interviews. The other eight are where projects actually break. If a builder can't answer them clearly, or doesn't want to, that's the answer.

We work primarily in Burnaby with custom builds across Vancouver, Coquitlam, North Vancouver, Surrey, and the Fraser Valley. The 12 questions below apply regardless of municipality. The answers reveal more than any quote ever will.

Why these questions matter more than the price

A custom-home contract is the most consequential procurement decision a homeowner is likely to make. The dollar number gets all the attention; the operational, legal, and relational dimensions of the contract usually get none. The 12 questions below are designed to surface those other dimensions before they become problems instead of after.

Three things to remember when running this list with a builder:

The builder's posture matters as much as the answer. A confident, specific, plain-language reply is itself a signal. Defensiveness is a different signal.
Bring the list in writing. Asking the questions in order, with notes, lets you compare answers across builders honestly.
Don't expect every builder to have the same answer. The goal isn't a single right answer. It's clarity on what you're actually buying.

1. Who specifically will manage my project day-to-day?

Not the company name. The person. Their phone number. Their backup if they're sick. The single most predictive factor of whether a project runs smoothly is whether you know who to call at 7am on a Tuesday, and whether they pick up. Larger firms sometimes assign a project coordinator who never visits the site. Smaller firms sometimes have the principal building everything. Both can work. The honesty about who actually owns the project matters more than the title.

2. What does your contract include, and exclude?

Read the exclusions list, not just the inclusions list. The exclusions are where surprise change orders live. Good builders write the exclusions plainly. Less honest ones bury them. Specific items worth confirming on the exclusions list:

Soils and drainage allowance versus actuals (lots in Burnaby, Surrey, and the Fraser Valley vary widely; an allowance can blow up if soils come back surprising)
Window upgrades versus base specification (Step Code-grade windows are not always the base spec)
Cabinet allowance versus to-budget detailing
Landscape and hardscape scope
Permit fees and development charges (these can be substantial in Burnaby and Vancouver)

3. How do you handle change orders?

Ask for the process in writing. Who approves them. How they're priced. How long they take to process. What the markup structure looks like. A vague answer here is the single biggest predictor of a contentious build. Look for a builder who can describe the change order workflow in three sentences without hedging.

4. Show me three references, not the three easy ones

Any builder can give you their three happiest clients. Ask for one project that ran into trouble. Then ask what was done about it. The answer to that question tells you more than the other two references combined. Better still: walk a finished home that's been lived in for at least three years. Look at how the doors close, how the trim joints have aged, whether the cabinetry still looks crisp. The boring details are the honest ones.

5. What's your warranty, and who actually services it?

Every licensed residential builder in BC carries the mandatory 2-5-10 warranty: two years on materials and labour, five years on the building envelope (including water penetration), ten years on structural defects in load-bearing elements. The framework is set by BC's Homeowner Protection Act and administered through approved warranty providers, per BC Housing's Home Warranty Insurance page. That's the floor.

The interesting question isn't what's on paper. It's who actually picks up the phone in year three when something the warranty covers shows up. Do you call the same person? Have they done that, on the record, for clients further out? A builder who can name three specific year-three or year-five warranty service moments is a different proposition from one who refers warranty issues to "the third-party administrator."

6. Who are your subtrades, and how long have you worked with them?

The quality of a build is the quality of its trades. A builder who has worked with the same framer, electrician, and finish carpenter for ten years delivers a meaningfully different result than one who tenders every project from scratch. Worth asking specifically about:

The framing crew (everything in the wall depends on this)
The cabinet shop (in-house, regional, or imported)
The HVAC and mechanical trade (the Step Code makes this critical)
The flooring installer
The painter (Pacific Northwest humidity tests painters fast)

7. How do you communicate during the build?

Weekly site meetings? Photo updates? A client portal? An app? The right answer isn't a specific tool. It's a clear, repeatable cadence the builder can describe without thinking about it. Three things worth confirming:

The frequency of formal updates (weekly, biweekly, monthly)
The medium (email summary, app dashboard, phone call, site walk)
The escalation path when something time-sensitive comes up between scheduled updates

8. What's the worst thing that's happened on a recent build?

Every builder has a story like this. The ones who tell it openly tend to be the ones you want. The ones who claim nothing has gone wrong are the ones you don't. The follow-up question is more important: how did the builder handle the resolution? Who paid for what? Did the client end up satisfied?

9. Are you a Master Residential Builder?

The Master Residential Builder designation through CHBA BC requires at least 10 years in residential construction (5 of those at management level), an 80% pass on the program's required courses, and three reference letters from clients, suppliers, or subtrades.

It isn't the only signal of quality. The absence of it on a builder who has been around for fifteen years, though, is a question worth asking out loud. It's also worth asking which credential applies: CHBA BC publishes a list of certified designation holders that an owner can check independently, separate from anything the builder claims.

10. What's the schedule, in writing, with milestones?

A real schedule is dated, milestone-broken, and updated on a regular cadence. If a builder can't produce one before you sign, they won't produce one after. The schedule should call out at minimum:

Permit submission date
Permit issuance target
Excavation and foundation pour dates
Framing complete
Roof complete (a common weather-cycle pivot point)
Mechanical, electrical, plumbing rough-in
Insulation and drywall
Finishes start
Substantial completion target
Move-in target

Each milestone needs a date, a duration, and a dependency. Schedules without dependencies don't survive contact with reality.

11. What happens if you go bankrupt or sell the company?

Awkward question. Important answer. Look for builders who carry deposit insurance, hold client funds in trust, and have a clear succession plan. The 2-5-10 warranty is a statutory protection, but warranty coverage alone doesn't help you complete an unfinished build. Two specific protections worth asking about:

Deposit insurance (or trust account holding) for the funds you've already paid
Continuity of warranty in the event of company sale (the 2-5-10 warranty is property-attached and survives, but service responsiveness can shift)

12. Why do you want to build my project?

If they answer in terms of revenue, that's data. If they answer in terms of the project itself — the lot, the design, the challenge — that's a different kind of data. Both can work. You just want to know which kind you're getting before you sign.

Bring this list to every builder you interview, including us. The questions either get answered cleanly, or they don't. That distinction is the answer.

— Sanj Aggarwal, CHBA BC Master Residential Builder

Beyond the questions: what to verify independently

Three pieces of due diligence worth doing on any builder you're seriously considering, in any municipality from Burnaby to Vancouver to the Fraser Valley:

Confirm the residential builder licence is active. BC Housing maintains a public registry of licensed residential builders. A builder without an active licence cannot legally construct a new home in BC.
Look up the warranty provider on the licence. The Homeowner Protection Act requires that every licence be accepted by a warranty insurance provider. Confirm which one is named and that the coverage is current.
Search the public ledger of cancellations and disciplinary actions. Under the Homeowner Protection Act, a residential builder licence can be cancelled, and corporations cannot relicense individuals associated with cancelled licences within five years. The public record is searchable.

This independent verification takes about an hour. It's the cheapest insurance on the entire project.

What the right answer to all 12 sounds like

A builder who can answer all 12 cleanly is signalling something specific. Not just competence, though that matters. Operational maturity, clear systems, an understanding of what the contract actually has to do, and a willingness to be transparent about the parts of building that don't show up on a marketing site.

We don't think any builder should be hired without going through all 12. The questions either get answered cleanly, or they don't. That's the test.

Related on the Journal

Part of the Builder Selection Guide: Choosing a Custom Home Builder — full guide