For a custom home in the City of Toronto, hard construction costs typically fall between $300/sqft and $550/sqft in 2026 — with $400/sqft being a fair midpoint. A 3,500 sqft home therefore runs $1.05M–$1.93M in hard costs alone. Add land, permits, Development Charges, Committee of Adjustment fees, architect and engineer fees, HST, and contingency — and total project cost commonly lands at 1.6–2× the hard cost. Use our estimate tool for a tailored range.

From signed contract to substantial performance, a 3,500–5,000 sqft custom home runs 14–20 months. A whole-house renovation runs 10–16 months. Add another 3–9 months for pre-construction if you're starting from a napkin — architectural design, permits, and City of Toronto Committee of Adjustment variances all take real time. The single biggest lever on schedule is getting a complete permit set before we break ground.

Both work. We're happy to tender a completed architectural package from any licensed architect you've already engaged. We also run full design-build engagements where we bring in design partners from our network, coordinate them, and carry a single-point-of-responsibility contract. Design-build is faster (3–6 months saved on average) and reduces change orders, but design-bid-build gives you more design-team choice.

Yes. We carry $10M Commercial General Liability, $5M Umbrella, Contractor's Equipment coverage, and full WSIB coverage on every Canadian site. We're bondable to $50M by Trisura Guarantee and can provide performance and labour & materials bonds on any competitive bid. COIs and bond capacity letters are available on request during procurement.

Every Icon Builders project carries a 2-year workmanship warranty from substantial performance — double the Ontario statutory minimum. Residential new builds additionally carry Tarion warranty (1/2/7 years, delivered through the Tarion program). We honour warranty calls within 5 business days for non-emergency items and same-day for anything affecting occupancy or safety.

Every scope change is documented in a formal Change Order (CO) before the work starts — we never do extra work and bill for it later. Each CO includes quantified cost impact, schedule impact, and a plain-English summary. You sign before we proceed. Our clients typically see 3–8% of contract value in change orders on a custom home — most commonly from owner-initiated finish upgrades mid-stream.

As a GC, we're your single-point contractor — we hold all subcontractor contracts, carry all risk, and deliver on a fixed price (stipulated sum). As a CM, we work as your advisor during pre-construction (budgeting, value engineering, constructability review), and in the construction phase you have the option of CM-at-risk (we hold subs, like a GC, typically on a GMP) or CM-agency (you hold subs, we project-manage on fee). CM-at-risk-GMP is the most popular choice for our institutional clients.

We bid competitive stipulated-sum tenders, but our best outcomes come from CCDC 5B CM-at-Risk with GMP or CCDC 14 Design-Build engagements where we're involved in pre-construction. On a 24-month project, early CM involvement typically saves 8–12% on hard cost and 4–6 weeks on schedule vs hard-bid delivery.

We self-perform structural framing, finishing carpentry, and site supervision. Everything else — mechanical, electrical, plumbing, concrete, roofing, envelope, millwork — is delivered by our long-term subcontractor partners. We keep framing in-house because it lets us control structural quality and schedule contingency, which are the two biggest single-point risks on any project.

Yes to all three. We've delivered 8 LEED-certified projects (4 at Gold, 2 at Platinum), Toronto Green Standard Tier 2 and Tier 3 certified buildings since 2019, and our first Passive House retrofit in 2023. We carry a LEED AP BD+C and a Certified Passive House Tradesperson on staff and work closely with RDH Building Science on envelope detailing.

At schematic design (SD), our elemental estimates typically land within ±15% of the final GMP. At design development (DD, ~60%), we narrow to ±8%. At 100% construction documents, we hit ±3% — most often coming in slightly under on value-engineered packages. We publish these variance figures on every project and track them in our post-project reviews.

Our three offices (Toronto, Kelowna, Miami Beach) are each staffed with senior PMs who hold the relevant trade qualifications for their market: OBC and AODA in Ontario, BC Building Code and Energy Step Code in BC, and Florida Building Code (including High-Velocity Hurricane Zone where applicable) in Florida. We never run a site from a remote office — every project has a PM and superintendent who live and work within 45 minutes of the site.

Residential: we take on whole-house renovations from $500K and custom new builds from $1.5M hard cost. Commercial and institutional: we take on projects from $2M. We'll often look at smaller projects for repeat clients or when scope is a good fit for our self-perform crews, but the economics of our project-management overhead mean we don't tender jobs below these thresholds as a rule.