Buying a new home is both one of the most exciting and simultaneously one of the most stressful moments in anyone’s life.
Now, imagine adding even more stress because you are actually having a house built from the ground up.
Having a house built from scratch has some amazing benefits such as being able to truly customize it to your particular preferences. But, there’s a major cost besides money associated with those benefits.
You need to manage the architects and contractors that are doing the hands-on work.
Luckily, there have been many other people in your place. By learning from their mistakes you can do your best to minimize the mistakes you make. You still will make some, but a few small mistakes are much better than a lot of big and expensive ones.
Here are three mistakes you will want to keep your mind on and make sure you avoid making.
No matter how much experience you have as a contractor, acting as the lead contractor on your own home is almost always a mistake. It can work in the rare case you aren’t working on anything else at the time. But, in most instances, it’s a very poor choice.
First, if you think you can be your own contractor because you have a little experience, you are going to quickly regret your decision. Unless you are a contractor by trade, you aren’t going to have the contacts in the industry to get you the best prices on additional labor and supplies.
Next, those same relationships that you lack can hurt you in another way. Anyone you do manage to hire is going to see you as a one-off job because once your house is built they will never hear from you again. If you hire a contractor that then hires extra labor, that labor knows there’s a very good chance they will work with him or her again in the future. Who do you think they will respect more and work harder for?
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No matter how hard it might be to swallow, that log cabin you’ve always wanted might not be the right fit for your small city lot. Or, the three thousand square foot colonial might not sit well on your sloped lot.
You want to make sure the house plans you have are for a house that makes sense with the land it’s going on. And, if you are trying to figuratively jam a square peg into a round hole and put a house into a space that doesn’t completely make sense, you are going to have to do some preliminary work to excavate the land properly so that the house will fit where you want it.
Trying to jam too much house into too little space or stick a house on land that isn’t ready for it is sadly an all too common rookie home builder mistake.
One of the most important factors in having success with building a new home is to have flawless planning from the start. If your plans are solid, and the labor is competent, you will have a successful build.
However, if for some reason you decide you want to start making changes on the fly, you’re going to run into all kinds of problems. The first is that your changes are going to open you up for problems with the township or city you’re are building in as they never approved them.
Second, other parts of your new home, such as its HVAC system, was designed to work efficiently with the original design. When you make changes it has a domino effect that could cause problems all over the place.
Having a new home built from scratch is extremely exciting. It’s also very stressful and it will put you under a lot of pressure. The best way to avoid making mistakes while under so much pressure is to have tremendous planning from the very beginning and to make sure you follow those plans to a tee. The results will all be worth it.
