Many of us aspire to build custom homes. The idea of creating your own living space appeals to many people. What most people do not know is how frustrating, tedious, and time-consuming the process can be.
However, there are ways to avoid most issues by working with a licensed home builder. How you communicate your desires and needs with the homebuyer will determine how much you love the final product.
Here are five tips for working with a homebuilder to help you build your dream house.
1. Be Picky When Choosing a Builder
Before you get the ball rolling on your home building project, you need to spend time and due diligence finding the right home builder. You will be working with this person or company regularly for a significant period of time, so you want to find the right fit.
Look up the builder online, try and speak to previous clients, and pull their state records and look up any court cases against them. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You don’t want to find out halfway through the project you are dealing with an incompetent builder.
2. Make Construction Choices Before Breaking Ground
Once you are full-steam ahead with construction, any delays can cost significant amounts of time and money.
This means you need to choose your materials, paints, appliances, finishes, textures, landscaping and other custom elements. If you have not made choices early you could also run into a situation where you cannot find the necessary materials in time.
This simple action can go far toward keeping the project on budget and on time. Just like a home needs blueprints and permits to move forward, it also needs a unified vision- your vision- to get off the ground.
3. Stay in Regular Contact With Your Builder
Communication is absolutely essential to the building process.
When you regularly communicate with your builder you are tuned into the process in a way that more hands-off clients are not. If you have any questions about the process you can simply call, text or email the builder to get more information. Open lines of communication also help prevent mistakes and problems.
Do not micromanage your builder but be sure to touch base with them every so often to make sure the project is on schedule and being built to your standards and specifics.
4. Be Understanding When Delays Happen
Unless you work in the construction field, you have no idea how many different things can go wrong at a job site. There are rain and bad weather delays, code enforcement issues, labor problems, vendor hassles and so many more things that can go wrong when building a home.
These problems are often out of the builder’s control, and even the best in the business suffer setbacks from time to time. When faced with delays on your home- do not freak out- try and understand why these delays are happening and see if you can help speed along the process.
Many of the delays that happen have to do with city and local governments, and you as the homeowner/landowner can help the builder in some scenarios- most importantly be sure to put yourself in the builder’s shoes.
A little understanding will go a long way to getting the project completed.
5. Take Time to Visit the Construction Site
One of the beautiful things about building a home is the ability to control and monitor your investment.
If you had put the same amount of money into a hedge fund or ETF you would not have nearly the level of control over your asset. From time to time while your home is under construction you should drop by and take a look.
You can ensure that the fixtures, tiling, and materials that you need are getting put in. In addition, you can get a feel for how well-managed the site is- if there are any problems you will know firsthand, rather than through intermediaries.
Things can quickly go wrong with new construction, especially on a custom project. Keeping abreast of new on-site developments will give you the ability to manage, or even completely eliminate many potential problems.
The Breakdown
Working with a home builder to build your perfect residence is challenging, but the rewards are well-worth it. Most importantly of all, when dealing with a builder use common sense, respect, and be proactive in the process to ensure you are able to build the home of your dreams.