THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BUILDING A NEW HOME

That’s great!

When you build a new home from scratch, you don’t have to worry about adjusting your lifestyle to fit someone else’s preferences. Instead, you can design every room in your new home to perfectly fit you and your families lifestyle.

Don’t worry – the process doesn’t have to be daunting. With a little bit of education and preparation the building process can actually be an effortless and enjoyable journey.

We’re going to show you how to:

Find out how much you can borrow and how to get the best deal on your home loan

Come up with an accurate budget (without missing some of the ‘hidden’ costs)

Decide on the best house design and layout (while avoiding typical beginner mistakes)

Choose the best builder to bring your vision to life (while avoiding all the horror stories)

Understand building contracts to keep the legal side of things under control

Keep track of each stage of the construction process

LOCATION

Where you are going to build your new home. This could include factors such as public transport, schools, distance to work, where other family members live, parks or playgrounds or even capital growth potential of the area.

TYPE OF HOME

Building the home of your dreams primarily means coming up with the perfect design to fit your ideal lifestyle. What exactly do you need? What do you want it to include and within what limitations (i.e. money, location, block size, etc.)?

FINANCE AND BUDGETING

First things first, before you can get down to the ‘fun part’ of building a house, you need to figure out how much the project is going to cost. Or to put it differently, how much you can realistically afford to borrow (and spend) on your new home.

 

Steps to Building a House

If you can’t find your dream home on the market or if you want to create a home that’s uniquely yours, you might consider building a house. Buyers who decided to build new homes were more likely to say that selecting the floor plan, having everything in the home be brand-new and customizing their home features were among their top reasons.* Before deciding if new construction is for you, you’ll want to learn about the different types of new-home construction and familiarize yourself with the process, from the initial land search all the way to selecting finishing touches.

Typically, when someone says they’re planning to build their own home, they are referring to a fully custom build where they have a say in almost everything (short of items restricted by local laws and zoning regulations). But, in the realm of new construction

Spec homes. With a spec home (short for speculative home), a home builder designs and constructs a single-family home without having one individual buyer in mind. Instead, they plan on selling the house to a buyer once it’s finished. Depending on how early in the process you are able to go under contract, you may be able to select some of the home’s final touches, like flooring, kitchen appliances and paint color. Sometimes these homes are listed for sale as “pre-construction.”

Tract homes. With a tract home, a developer purchases a parcel of land and divides it into individual lots. Then, a home builder constructs all of the homes in that planned community. Tract homes can be condominiums, townhomes or single-family homes. Most homes in the community will look similar, and shared amenities are common. Similar to spec homes, you may be able to select some finishes in advance, depending on the timeline.

Fully custom homes. With a fully custom home, you typically find the land on your own then hire a builder to build your dream home. You have total control over the floor plan, layout and finishes, but the process requires a lot of decision-making, attention to detail and disciplined budgeting — custom homes can be expensive.

 

Helpful tips for building a house

Building your home from the ground up can be an incredibly rewarding experience. It gives you the opportunity to tailor your home to suit your tastes and needs both now and in the future. But as anyone who’s watched any homebuilding show can tell you, it can also be a tremendously stressful and time-consuming process.

Get your plan in place

eccentric widow who thought if she stopped construction on the house, she’d fall prey to vengeful spirits. The house is a labyrinth of stairs that dead-end into ceilings, hallways that grow narrower and narrower until they disappear, doors that open onto two-story drops. This is what happens when you build without a plan. It’s fascinating, but not a very welcoming abode.

Make sure you meticulously plan the details of your house. What direction will it face on the lot? What will the layout and flow of the rooms be? What kind of lighting will you use, and how many power points will you install? (tip: you always need more than you think).

You’ll also want to start keeping track of design ideas that inspire you, and that you’d like to emulate. Think about starting a Pinterest board for each room of your house to file away examples of your favorite designs. As well as helping you plan, they’ll be a great point of reference to show your builders before construction is underway.

Budget more than you expect

No matter how much you think the building process is likely to cost, it’s likely going to cost more. There could be any number of items that aren’t included in the estimate your builder gives you. For instance, your builder is unlikely to include costs such as electrical and gas meters, internet & cable hookups or window coverings. Items such as landscaping and outdoor concrete, fences and gates, decking and letterboxes might also not be included in the estimate. These are known as finishing costs, and could run anywhere from 15-25% of your budget. You’ll also need to take into account site costs and zoning fees, which are the costs associated with preparing your site for construction, and you may also have to pay for planning application fees.

 

The home building guide

Here is a list of important things to keep in mind when you decide to build your own home:

Do

l Prepare for delays and extra costs

l Take natural lighting into consideration when designing the windows

l Think about the saleability of the property when you plan it

l Plan for extra electrical outlets all over the house

l Be actively involved in the entire process

l Thorough investigation while selecting the builder or contractor

Don’t

l Be short-sighted about your family’s space and storage needs

l Miss out anything from the written agreement

l Put cost before quality. Good materials will stand the test of time

l Ignore the advice of professionals

l Rush into the building process

Documents needed

l Land title, land clearance and zonal clearance (from the State Revenue Department)

l Copy of the Building Plan Approval will be needed by many agencies like the land development office or electricity board, etc.

l The floor plan can be taken from the architect and engineer

l The local authority will provide a permission letter and commencement certificate

l The local water supply and sewage board will have to be paid a certain fee and they will then inspect the premises before providing water and sanitary approval as well as sanctioning a new borewell for the house.

l The electricity board will grant temporary electricity connection before metered connection is given after completion of the construction

l After inspection, you will get an occupancy certificate by the authority

Building costs

The construction costs will depend on the location of the plot and the amenities nearby. That said, the current construction cost is anywhere between $1500 and $1700 per sq.ft. for building a budget home, $1800-$2200 per sq.ft. for building a luxury home, and approximately $2600 per sq.ft. for a premium home.

 

Home Building Manual

Management is the Key!

This manual is written for the “white shirt”…  the MANAGER  … the person that isn’t going to go out and hang drywall or  lay sod or swing the hammer. Many homebuilding manuals focus on actual construction techniques: how to frame a house, wire it, plumb it, install the drywall, and so on. But as a Manager, you don’t want to actually build the home yourself. You don’t have the time nor the skills. That’s why you hire other people to do the work.  They are called Sub Contractors.  And you need to know what they do and when they need to do it….

Building it Right, The First Time!

If you’re serious about building your own home…… This is the Construction Manual you’ve been searching for. This is NOT a Guide or Pamphlet. This is THE HOME BUILDING MANUAL that is used throughout the United States by new and experienced home building professionals.

How Much Will The Home Cost ?

Before you approach a lender you must have a Construction Budget.  Our budget is 16 Pages long, with over 700 line items!!  Items such as Loan Application Fees, Builders Risk Insurance, School Impact Fees, as well as Construction Expenses for Excavating, Insulation and Carpet Installation are included, and much more

Keeping Your Home On Schedule

Tracking reports, construction time lines, and chronological check list schedules are a must if you want to “make things happen” at the “right time”. Included in this Home Building Manual, you’ll find:

Pre-Construction Check Lists- Over 120 Construction Check List Items to consider before you even stake your lot. It is intended to identify expense areas and review events and conditions that may have an impact on the home you are building.

Construction Event Schedules- Over 500 Chronological and Sequential Check List Events that must be addressed AND completed in the building of ANY home.

Daily Activity Report- A document form to keep track of the daily events that occurred on your home. Weather, Site Conditions, Who Worked, What Happened!

85 Day Critical Event Schedule- These are the KEY “Critical Events” that MUST be completed before the home can proceed to the next “Critical Event”.

100 Day Construction Timeline- A graphic presentation of Critical Events as they relate to one another.

Back-End Event Schedule- After the home is Insulated, things can become hectic. This detailed  schedule will  “Keep You Focused” and help you manage the construction events in a practical, step by step process.

What do I need to know before remodeling a kitchen?

If you sometimes have trouble deciding what to make for dinner, a kitchen renovation can feel paralyzing. But take heart: It doesn’t really matter much which backsplash tiles or faucet you choose. As long as you get the big stuff right, you’ll be thrilled with your new kitchen. These five rules will help you get the best result at the right price.

Keep your outlay in sync with your home.

To avoid overimproving, cap your kitchen renovation budget at 15% of your home’s value, suggests John Bredemeyer, president of Realcorp, a national appraisal firm based in Omaha. (Check your town assessor’s site or a real estate site). For budgeting purposes, figure about 30% on cabinets; 14% on appliances; 10% on countertops; 5% on lighting; 4% on plumbing fixtures; 2% to 3% on paint; 1% to 2% on tiles, and 35% on construction costs, such as windows, flooring, and labor. For a house worth $250,000, that translates to about $11,000 on cabinets, $5,250 on appliances; $3,750 on countertops, $1,875 on lighting; $1,500 on plumbing fixtures; $1,125 on paint; $750 on tiles; and $12,000 on construction costs.

It pays to pay for your design.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch—or a free plan for renovating the place where you prepare lunch. While the designers at home centers, kitchen stores, and cabinet shops won’t charge you a fee, they aren’t working for free. Their paychecks come from the retailer or manufacturers of the products they’re selling, which limits your choices. What’s more, in-store designers, especially those working at home centers, tend to be relatively inexperienced with actual renovation work, says Portland, Ore., kitchen designer Chelly Wentworth. Since your project will only be as good as its design, skip the freebies and hire a veteran designer without any conflicts of interest. Expect to pay 3 to 10 % of your project costs for design—a fair price for a design that really works.

 

You can expand the kitchen without busting the budget.

Unless your house was built within the last few decades, your kitchen is almost certainly undersized. If you’re doing a major renovation (in other words, tearing things out and starting over), now is the time to expand the kitchen; here’s how to do it affordably.

• Steal space. By repurposing square footage from an adjacent hallway or a no-longer-needed chimney, closet, or porch, you can expand your kitchen at perhaps half the per-square-foot costs of an addition. Exactly how much you’ll pay depends on the project and location, but you might pay $100 to $300 per square foot for recapturing space vs. $200 to $400 for building new.
• Open the floorplan. Even if you don’t expand the kitchen at all, you can make it feel much bigger by taking down a wall and creating an open floorplan between the kitchen and adjacent dining, family, or living room. In the context of a renovation project, this may cost $1,000 to $6,000, depending on whether the wall is load-bearing or contains major plumbing or electrical lines.
• Bump out. If you need to expand, you may be able to add a two-foot extension along one whole side of the kitchen by hanging it off the house like a bay window rather than putting it on a foundation. That could save you several thousand bucks compared with a full-fledged addition.

 

Things to Consider Before Remodeling Your Kitchen

Renovating parts of your home can be a very rewarding process and, when done well, can add considerable value to your property. There are a range of options when it comes to remodeling your home, but if your budget can only stretch to remodeling one room, that room should be the kitchen. It’s estimated that a new kitchen will improve the value of your property by around 6% . It’s also one of the most important rooms for prospective buyers, so it’s worth some serious consideration.

Kitchen remodeling is about more than just aesthetics. You can also focus on better utilization of space, add extra functionality or integrate your kitchen with other areas of your home. Determine exactly what you want to achieve before you start planning your kitchen remodeling project. This will help you to streamline the renovation process and ensure everyone involved is on the same page from the offset.

Set a realistic budget

Before you begin remodeling your kitchen, it’s important to consider your budget against the value of your property. There’s no point in investing $20,000 in a premium new kitchen if your property is only worth $200,000 – you simply won’t get your money back. Equally, if you remodel on a low budget but your property is worth upwards of $500,000, you could end up devaluing your home.

Do your homework and try to arrive at an estimated cost before you go out and start buying stuff. Once you understand exactly how much you are able to invest, and what your return on that investment will be, you can begin designing your dream kitchen.

 

Plan your new kitchen appliances carefully

It’s common for people to leave appliances to the last minute when planning their kitchen remodeling. This may mean you run out of budget, or face with unexpected costs, prompting you to opt for lower quality products. It’s important to plan appliances carefully, as going for lower quality could end up costing you more, further down the line.

When looking for appliances, consider:

• Quality and longevity
• Energy efficiency
• Size
• Features and technologies
• Flexibility and ease of use

There’s no hard and fast rule for how much you should spend on new kitchen appliances. The quality and range of appliances you go for will depend on your overall budget. Built-in appliances  are an extremely effective solution. They fit perfectly within the dimensions of your kitchen and give a more seamless, elegant finish. As a general rule, you should leave about 20% of your budget for new appliances.

 

Contemplate an Addition

Gaining more space is often a common motivation for remodeling a kitchen. Still, before you knock out the walls, weigh the cost of the extra space. You may be able to use the money spent on an expansion for quality cabinets or high-end appliances instead.

If it’s truly more space you’re after, look to adjoining rooms and places where you can steal square footage. For example, it might make sense to take from a hodgepodge of smaller rooms (laundry room, pantry, bathroom, and mudroom) and merge them into one super-functional kitchen space. After that, discuss your project with a certified kitchen planner or architect. A good space planner will be able to reconfigure the walls, the ceiling, or the windows to make a kitchen space feel larger without the expense of a room addition.

What Are the Advantages of Working With a Small Home Builder?

It is true that working with a large builder has many benefits, but working with a small home builder has its own benefits. In fact, if you are not looking to build a large building, the benefits of working with a small builder can outweigh the benefits of working with a large builder. Builders working on a small scale have the following advantages that large builders often lack.

Custom home builders can construct your new home where you want it

Custom builders are generally working on only one venture at a time. Resultantly, they are not frightened to look into choices.

By contrast, big builders think big, which translates to the fact that their perception is not in terms of houses, but terms of developments. To fashion a development, the big builders need to acquire and locate bigger pieces of land. The location for the building is limited to these. These pieces of land are seldom available near urban centers, denotating that if you don’t require a long journey, a big builder may not be of any use to you.

 

You’re an individual and you would like your house to function too

Generally, you can anticipate nearly complete customisation out of a little builder. To start, a custom builder is functioning using a larger selection of design choices, frequently built on a single lot. This permits you to choose most details of your new residence. In addition, by definition, a little builder will probably have fewer workers, meaning he will almost always be onsite. You’ll have ample chance to modify things you dislike. Your contractor is also quite prone to accommodate you into these places because he’s very likely to reside in the region where he works and his professional reputation depends, in no small part, in your own satisfaction.

Volume builders build houses, normally many at a time, according to a much limited library of house plans. They are going to have bought the majority of the substances and pre-determined all your home’s design components nicely ahead. You are able to”customise” your house with your collections of countertops, appliances, etc., however, the contractors are on a really strict program, and are not necessarily inclined to create each the little changes you want to see. If you are building in a market place, possibly on a mountain or on a narrow lot, the larger developers may not discuss your vision.

You might have purchased that land on a mountain especially with a view to placing your home atop it, but your quantity builder can disagree, preferring to dig in the mountain and generate a set block on which to construct among the pre-created designs.

 

Smaller builders can be more knowledgeable

A smaller, local builder will be more likely to have built on similar terrain. Having built in your area, a custom builder will be able to tell you with confidence that, for instance, there is rock near the surface of the ground in your area, making excavation impossibility. This sort of prior knowledge can end up saving you money in site costs.

 

 

Custom creates often happen to be of higher high quality

First way that large builders keep their prices thus low is by acquiring parts of homes developed in a plant, in that case introduced to the web page, badly affecting both this top quality and the components themselves.

Personalized home constructors are far less most likely (or able) to participate in this practice, usually ensuing in a much better built home.

 

More Aware of Your Needs

As most small home builders have the extensive local knowledge, and they are available to discuss and share this knowledge with you, they become more aware of your needs. They can recommend you a number of things, like the size of your home and the layout of your garden, which will prove valuable in the coming years.

Flexible Locations

Small builders are often more likely to travel to the location you have chosen for your home. large builders either do not engage in the projects with inconvenient location or only send the lower level staff to such locations.

In conclusion, larger builders do take the benefits of working fast. They could provide bigger homes for smaller costs, but that comes at the expense of this individualisation that probably drove one to build, rather than buy, a house in the first location.