Things to Think About When Building a Custom Home

Why would anyone choose to go through the hassle of building a custom home versus just buying an existing home? Why wait for months while your home is built when you can move into a resale home in weeks and get on with your life?

While it may seem strange to others, people who choose a custom home over an existing home often have good reasons for doing so. Some of the common reasons they cite are:

· A custom home is future-proof because it is designed with the needs of a growing family in mind

· The custom home is built where the owner wants it, instead of being limited to the location of an existing home

· A custom home has almost-zero maintenance costs because everything is new

· Building a custom home allows homeowners to maximize space and install the latest technology

· A custom home is a true expression of the owner because it is specifically built to their lifestyle

In a nutshell, there are a lot of things to be said about building your home from scratch. It gives you more control over the eventual quality of the property. But this is only if you have the know-how to manage the custom build.

Like all construction projects, a custom home build has several moving parts and many potential pitfalls. There are lots of things that can happen to inflate the cost of the project, extend it beyond the planned schedule, and impair the overall quality of the home.

To help you avoid these problems, we have drawn up a list of very important things to take into consideration building your custom home.

1. Location before design

The land you choose determines the kind of house you can build on it. Most project owners have this in reverse. They assume they can fit their home design into any lot. But this is not so because things like community restrictions, zoning laws, building codes, as well as the nature of the land, will limit the type of house owners can build.

Before you go ahead and design your property, you should first find a lot that will allow you to do the things you want with the home. Also take the availability of schools, public utilities, amenities, and multimodal transport into consideration.

2. Plan every detail

Whatever can go wrong on a building project will usually go wrong, unless you make plans to prevent it. Building a house can be an incredibly messy process and this is worsened by the project owner's failure to plan properly.

Every part of the home and the construction process must be planned out in detail, even down to the type of curtains in the kitchen. This will introduce a measure of decision-fatigue into the process but it will save you tons of trouble in the future.

3. Budget before design

A second mistake many project owners make is to go ahead with the home design before they have set a budget for the project. What happens is after they have designed their dream home, the owner discovers it is beyond their budget.

They then try to fit that dream home into their limited resources, which creates problems. Before you start to design your home decide how much you want to spend on the property and let the designer understand and factor this into the design.

4. Design from the past and for the future

There are, at least, three things you should consider when designing your home. You should look at your current home and take inspiration from the things you don’t like about the property. Second, design with your future needs in mind. This should include your envisioned lifestyle and the projected needs of your family.

Third, you should design the home with resale in mind. Even though you want the home to be unique, Realty Management Associates explains, it should also be able to meet the needs of future buyers or renters.

5. The mortgage will not be straightforward

Financing the construction of a custom home is riskier for a lender than financing the purchase of an existing home. That is because if there is a problem with the project, there is no existing property that the lender can sell-off to recover their funds. As a result, many builders will not finance a custom home. The best way to finance a custom home is with a construction mortgage, a short-term loan with different terms from the standard home loan.

6. Choose an experienced builder

The builder you choose for your project can make the experience easier or harder for you. Not every builder will be right for your project because they may not be familiar with the area or your type of project.

Choosing a builder should be like an interview process. Shortlist only candidates who have relevant references, past projects, in the last three years, which are similar to yours. They must also be able to communicate well and play the role of teacher and partner throughout the project.

Finally, expect things to go wrong, particularly with the project's schedule and cost. You can reduce the impact of these by creating a contingency reserve and building additional time into the project schedule.