Building your own home is a dream opportunity to custom design your place to live. You can have the number of rooms you desire, and in the layout of your choosing, dependant on budget, of course. It’s a challenging project for the uninitiated to navigate through. There are so many things to get our heads around, and making a series of errors can make a very affordable build quickly turn into an expensive disaster.
Site
Where you choose to build your new home may be the biggest single challenge that faces you when deciding to go down this path. But what are the most significant deciding factors in this critical choice? There are the technical aspects of it first of all, how good is the quality of the ground? Will it require a lot of drainage or difficult excavation work? Also, how remote is it? Sites that are further from the beaten track will be more expensive to get basic amenities connected as electricity gas, and water all have a cost to connect, and the longer the distance from existing networks, the higher the price.
Choosing the Right Team
As well as getting the best possible site, you need to be aware of how much of an impact getting the right or the wrong, team of professionals can affect how successful the project is in the end. You’ll want to ensure the land has been accurately surveyed firstly, and any potential issues are flagged up before even starting. Choosing the best architect is also a key consideration, as you want someone who is experienced at working on self-build projects as they can differ from many other building works. Once you have the architect, then you need to hire your housebuilders. Do you want everything done by one building company, which saves a lot of time, or do you want to hire the individual masons, electricians, plumbers, etc. separately? It may also be an idea to hire builders that have previously worked with your architect as they will have an established professional relationship.
Smart or Dumb?
One of the biggest debated we continuously hear about the interior of our homes these days is the notion of a ‘smart home.’ Smart devices have been becoming more popular year on year over the last decade. A smart home is cool, and we can see this as we seamlessly can stream entertainment from our phones and then transfer the feed to smart tv or speakers. But there are very practical considerations as well, smart devices such as heating and lighting systems can save you a lot of money. You should also consider Vivint Smart Home as a smart security system built into your new house.
Local Area
You should consider the local area when choosing a location. This is different from the actual site we spoke of earlier, instead by this, we mean the area. How close is it to major cities, as this affects whether the property can be used to commute to work from? Or schools, shops, entertainment. All of this will impact how enjoyable life is and have a knock-on effect on the value of the property.
Re-Sell Value
Unless you are building to sell immediately, then this is an exceedingly difficult thing to gauge. There can be lots of factors that can influence this. One way of looking at what you might be able to get in the future for the house is to see if the property value has been stable or not? If the value has been steadily increasing for decades, then this is a good sign. If it fluctuates more or has only recently risen, then be more careful.