Number 1 – Building Your Dream Team
When building a home, you should have a team of professionals that you select to bring the house of your dreams to life. Spending the time necessary to research, will help you create the best team for you and your build!
This team should include an Architect, a Builder, an Interior Designer and a Landscape Architect (Yep! You heard me right! You want the landscape architect involved at the start of the process).
This team will guide you throughout the process and assist you in making the very important decisions along the way and you avoid the pitfalls that can come.
Number 2 – Location, Location, Location
You can have a beautiful home in a stinky location or a stinky home in a beautiful location, but why settle on either?. You can have both a beautiful home AND in a beautiful location! There are a lot of things to think about when choosing a location for your new build.
- How big do you want the lot to be?
- Where can you get a lot the size you want?
- What can you afford to spend on the lot?
- If you have kids, what are the schools in the area like?
- How close or far do you want to be from your family? 😂
- How close do you want to be to the things you love to do?
If you plan for this to be your forever home, you won’t want to sacrifice on the location but remember it is ok to be patient if you can’t find the right location instantly. It is ok to hold off on a build because you haven’t found the right place yet. Or if you find that it is better to buy and remodel, there is a market for that as well (you still need these top 5 things; the project scope may just change a little).
Number 3 – Beauty Within Your Budget
Understand the value of your budget – make sure you understand that the bottom line is not always the best choice.
Often you can pull back on a design to make sure you aren’t cutting back on quality. Understand that less (in cost) isn’t always better, doing it for less often means that you are getting less. Ask the questions!! What do you give up when you choose a lesser bid? People don’t just do things for less.
Know where you want to splurge ahead of time!
Decide the areas where you are willing to spend a little more and then the areas where you are willing to back off. You want to make sure you have all your needs met but also satisfy as many of your wants as you can within your budget!
Number 4 – Patience is a Virtue
Be patient with the process and trust your team! You hired the experts to do what they do best, allow them the space and trust them to do what you hired them to do with your input and guidance.
The only poor question is the one that you don’t ask. Your team doesn’t know what you don’t know unless you tell them that you don’t know. (Did you get that 😂)
I promise you won’t look dumb when you ask questions about things you don’t understand. Being willing to ask the questions will only benefit you in the building process.
Then, always remember no build goes perfectly – there will be hiccups along the way that may cause delay…or turn into happy accidents!
Number 5 – Don’t Rush the Process
The building process will more than likely take longer than anticipated, plan on it taking longer from the start. It is important to schedule accordingly and I cannot emphasize enough to not hurry up your final walkthrough.
You will want all the punch list items to be finished before you move in (see the blue tape on the glass and cabinet.. Not everything was finished on move in). Truthfully, it can be almost impossible to get things finished. Not because your team and contractors don’t want to get it done for you, but because those waiting on their homes to be completed get moved to the top of the list. It is definitely worth waiting until everything is complete to move into your beautiful new home. There will always be a few exceptions to this rule…but I still stand by it as an overall goal.
If you are wanting to build, currently building or plan to build, I truly hope that this will help you in your process of getting the home of your dreams! I’m ALWAYS here to answer any questions you might have, to the best of my ability!
Love,
Alli
