The process of building a custom home is often the most misunderstood part of searching for or considering a new home. Many home buyers consider building a custom home; however, lose interest in the details and instead decide to buy a new home that has already been built or simply purchase a home from a previous homeowner. The following is information you need to know before building a custom home or give up on the idea of building a custom home.
Common Problems for Custom Home Buyers
Much of the confusion in building a custom home is related to the process of building a custom home. The basic sequence of building a custom home is very simple, unless you take a do-it-yourself approach to building a custom home. The mistake many potential home buyers make when considering a custom home is to search for and find their “perfect lot” themselves, then hire an architect to design their dream home, and then approach builders in your community with existing architectural plans to seek bids on building the home.
Many builders that are approached with existing architectural plans will bid the project lower than they can actually build your custom home, as they know you are taking your plans to multiple builders and simply looking for the lowest bid. This results in receiving custom home estimates that are lower than the real cost to build. The builder is then forced to learn how to build your home as they go, with no experience with the design or layout of the home prior to your new plans.
Best Practice for Building a Custom Home
The most cost effective and fastest way to build the custom home of your dreams is to meet with builders, review existing plans with custom home builders, and select a builder that you will trust to create your dream home. Once you have hired the custom home builder that you are going to trust with your custom home, they should help you identify the lot for your custom home and begin the build! This process is tried and tested and is always faster, less expensive, and creates a better experience for you as a custom home buyer.
Step by Step Process for Building a Custom Home
Custom Home Builder: the first step in building your custom home is to interview and select your home builder. You should begin your search by speaking with friends, family, and neighbors, as well as a real estate professional to identify a home builder that you can trust. This will help you create an initial list of prospective home builders. Additionally, you should search the internet for builders. Be careful; the internet has no bar to entry, i.e. even bad custom home builders can build a website.
It is important to look at online reviews and testimonials as well as prior customer experiences to identify two or three custom home builders that you would like to meet with in person. Once you have narrowed your list of custom home builders to two or three potential builders, develop of list of questions or issues you want to discuss and begin the interview process! The following are a few topics you will want to cover in your interviews:
- How closely will your home builder work with your interior designer and architect?
- What protections do you have in place for my estimating process?
- How do you know your budget will be accurate for my custom home build?
- What is your process for developing an estimate for my custom home?
- What experience do you have building the quality and size home that we are building?
- How are you compensated for the pre-construction or planning process?
- Who will be in charge of my project and how involved with they be in supervising construction?
- What process do you have in place to address my concerns and questions during the custom home building process?
- What steps do you take to qualify the subcontractors that will work on my custom home?
- What is the process and cost for changes in the design plan or custom home building project?
- How long will the construction process last and what protections do you have in place to reduce delays?
- Do you have fixed-price or cost-plus custom home building contracts?
- Can you provide me a list of references, including past or current clients?
Once you have completed the process of vetting, interviewing, and hiring your custom home builder, you can start the building process!
Your Custom Home Lot: identifying a lot to purchase for your custom home is a critical step in the building process. In our real estate market, Oklahoma City metro, including Edmond, you have likely seen a lot of new construction. However, most of these projects are “spec” homes, meaning a builder purchased a lot from a developer and then designed and built a home on the speculation or hope that a new buyer will select their “spec” home.
This prevalence of “spec” homes being built in the Oklahoma City real estate market leads to competition for identifying and purchasing a lot on which to build your dream home. Working with an existing builder to purchase a lot for your dream home comes with the advantages. One advantage is the relationships and expertise of your builder in identifying the right lot for your custom home. The benefit of this existing connections to developers allows you to contract for your desired lot, potentially before it is available to private buyers. The following is a list of important considerations before purchasing a lot:
- Title Insurance and Survey: title insurance protects you from potentially unknown liens or transfers of the property. The survey will identify the exact boundary of your property, your lot, which can protect you from future development issues.
- Setbacks: requirements for a specific distance from the properly line to the house, which can greatly limit the size of your custom home.
- Architecture Restrictions: most developments have restrictions on the elevation or architecture that is allowed in the development, which is important to know, if you want a specific home design, it is important the development you are building in will allow that type of design. Looking at existing custom homes in the neighborhood will help you get a sense; however, a review of specific restrictions is important.
- Easements: use agreements and easements can burden your land use by allowing utilities and neighbors the right to enter your property, build on your property, and restrict your use of your own property.
- Public Water, Sewage, soil quality, etc.: there are many other factors to consider that you should discuss with your builder when evaluating a lot.
Designing Your Custom Home: when you remove the speculative risk for your custom home builder, you will be rewarded with cost savings and being involved in every step of the home building process. Experienced custom home builders will have a variety of plans that you can look at to begin the design process. By starting with existing plans, your Oklahoma custom home builder can give you a variety of proposals to make your custom home exactly the way you want it.
Your custom home builder will not be motivated to obtain massive profit in any step of the process, when they know that you are working with them every step of the way.
It is important to hire a builder that you trust and has a reputation of excellence. Builders that introduce you to former clients and keep you involved in the building process will build you a home to last a lifetime and beyond. When you focus solely on price, you miss many important considerations.
Working with Builder during Custom Home Build: building a custom home is a lot of work; however, if you hire a reputable and experienced custom home builder, you will be able to pass the vast majority of the work off to your builder and their team. There will be hundreds of steps along the process; however, you can develop a unified vision for your home by working with the assistance of an Oklahoma custom home builder. Although it takes a lot of work, once you have selected your Oklahoma custom home builder, the lot you want to build and have designed your custom home, the rest of the work falls on your builder and maintaining communication throughout the process.
Contact Land Rush homes for a free custom home building strategy meeting. You can sit down with our team, learn from our years of experience, and design the home of your dreams! Contact us HERE or complete the contact information on this page and our team will reach out to you.
