Before you pay

Everything in this course narrows to two moments. The week you sign, and the week you pay the first valuation. Get those two right and most of what can go wrong on a self-build never starts.

These are not summaries. They are checks: five questions each, answered from your own documents rather than from memory. Answering a question from the paper in front of you is what makes you notice the answer you did not have.

Answer these from the site and your own tracker, before the money leaves.

1. Have I walked it and formed my own view of what is complete? Before reading their number. You cannot unsee their figure once you have seen it.

2. Does what I am paying for actually exist? Package by package. Not started, not nearly, not on order. Built.

3. Are the variations in this valuation ones I agreed in writing, at the price I agreed? Check against your register. Anything in the application that is not in your register is a question, not a payment.

4. Have I taken off retention and everything previously certified? The arithmetic, done by you.

5. If they stopped tomorrow, would I have paid for more than is standing? This is the only question that really matters, and it is the one nobody asks until the answer is yes.

Do this every month, and it takes about an hour. The month it saves you is not the month you do it. It is the month somebody else’s builder walks off a site with four valuations of nothing in his pocket, and yours cannot, because you never paid ahead.