Relocating for a construction job moves your household and leaves your working relationships behind. Expect a slower first year while you learn new subcontractors, owners and inspectors. Read the relocation package for its repayment clause and tax treatment, check the state’s licensing rules, and spend real time in the metro before you sell the house.
Suppose the offer is 15 percent more than you make in Atlanta, the contractor is in Dallas, and you say yes. Four months later you are buying out your first project there. The mechanical number comes in high from three subcontractors who have never heard of you, and the one who would have sharpened his pencil is a long day’s drive east. The 15 percent starts to look like payment for something nobody mentioned. Relocating for a construction job is rarely described that way in the offer letter, which is the reason to describe it here.
What stays behind when you move for a construction job?
Your book. The subcontractors who give you their best number, the owner’s representatives who return your call, the inspectors whose habits you know and the superintendents who would follow you all belong to a metro. Your skills travel. The relationships that made those skills look effortless do not.
For a long time the industry talked as though a good builder was a good builder anywhere, and for the technical half of the job that holds. A slab is a slab. The commercial half is local in ways that are easy to forget after fifteen years in one city. In Atlanta you knew which electrical subcontractor was overextended, which one priced high when he did not want the work, and which owner’s representative would approve a fair change order without a fight. In Dallas you know none of that, and your title suggests you do.
The effect shows up in specific places: buyout numbers that are a few points worse because nobody owes you anything, preconstruction pricing that lacks a trusted sub’s early budget, a city permitting office with its own rhythm, and a labor market you cannot read. If you are also changing building type, the gap doubles, and our note on switching sectors covers that half.
What replaces the old book
A plan for the first year, agreed before you accept. The old assumption was that a senior hire arrives fully effective. The workable one is that a relocated leader is fully effective technically on day one and commercially in about a year, and that both sides should say so out loud.
Ask for three things:
- A local partner. A superintendent or senior estimator who has worked the metro for a decade, assigned to your first job on purpose.
- Introductions with a schedule. The firm’s principal subcontractors and repeat owners, met in the first sixty days, before you need anything from them.
- A fair first-year measure. If your bonus depends on buyout savings, a first job bought with borrowed relationships should not be scored like a fifth one.
A contractor that has moved people before will have answers ready. One that has not will be working it out on you. The employer’s side of the same problem, including what it costs to run a job from a distance, is in our piece on staffing far from the office.
How do licensing rules differ from state to state?
Widely. Some states license general contractors through a state board, with an exam and a named qualifying individual. Others leave it to cities and counties. Texas does not license general contractors at state level, while Georgia does. Check the destination state’s board before you accept, particularly if your name is on a license today.
The practical questions are two. First, are you the qualifying individual on your current firm’s license? If so, your departure is a bigger event for that firm than a resignation, and your notice period should allow for it. Second, does the new firm expect you to qualify its license in the new state? Board approval can take time and may involve an exam and verified experience, so ask who handles it and who pays. The Georgia board publishes its own requirements, as most state boards do. The board and the firm’s counsel are the authority on the detail.
What should you read in a relocation package for a construction job?
The repayment clause first, then the tax treatment, then what is covered. A relocation package is typically a conditional payment: leave inside a stated period and you owe some or all of it back. The size of the allowance matters less than the terms on which it stops being yours.
Run the numbers on a worked example. You earn $160,000 and the new offer is 15 percent higher, a raise of $24,000. The package is $30,000, repayable in full if you leave within twelve months and at half that, $15,000, in the second year. If the job is wrong at month ten, leaving costs you $30,000, which is more than the entire raise.
Repayment clauses are ordinary and usually negotiable, and this is the part to slow down for. Three points decide how much they bite: whether repayment is prorated monthly or falls off a cliff, whether it applies if the firm ends your employment, and whether you repay the gross amount or what you received after tax. Enforceability varies by state, so have an employment lawyer read the clause.
| Package term | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Repayment period | Length, and monthly proration against a cliff |
| Who triggers repayment | Resignation only, or termination by the firm as well |
| Tax treatment | Whether the firm grosses up the taxable amount |
| Temporary housing | Number of months, and whether it runs alongside your mortgage |
| Home sale and purchase | Closing costs, and help if the house is slow to sell |
| Family travel | Trips home while the household is split |
The tax line surprises people. Under current federal rules an employer’s payment of moving costs is generally taxable wages for most employees, as the IRS guide to fringe benefits sets out, so a $30,000 package without a gross-up is worth less than it reads. A CPA can put a figure on it. The firm’s view of package design is in our note on relocating a leader.
How do you test a metro before you sell the house?
Rent first, and keep the house for six months if you can afford to. Spend two or three working weeks there before accepting. Have your partner look at their own job market, and compare pay and housing using public data. Selling is the one step in a relocation you cannot reverse.
For pay, the BLS publishes state wage tables and metro tables covering construction managers, so you can see whether 15 percent is a raise or simply the going rate where you are headed. For the work, look at what is being built and who is building it; our Texas market page describes how Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio differ.
Then there are the logistics of running a job from a furnished apartment while the household is in two places. Line the family’s move up with the school calendar, and assume the partner who is not changing jobs is carrying the harder half.
Moves like this often start with a quiet mandate, because a contractor building a team in a new metro seldom advertises it. That is the work Selah Talent Partners exists for: confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, for contractors across the United States. Bring the offer letter and the repayment clause to the candidates page before you sign either one. It costs a candidate nothing.
The salary moves with you on the first day. Everything that made you worth it has to be built again, so get paid, and protected, for the year that takes.
Sources and further reading
- Georgia board, State Licensing Board for Residential and General Contractors
- IRS guide, Publication 15-B, Employer’s Tax Guide to Fringe Benefits
- State wage tables, BLS occupational wages, Texas
- Metro tables, BLS occupational wages by metropolitan area