Why?
Why do you want to build a custom home? Have you looked at all other options on the market for homes that are available for resale? You see, building a custom home takes a lot of your time. It takes a lot of your money. It will suck your capacity level up to the point that you will feel like you have a second job. Like anything you do that is important in life, you need to establish your “why” early, or you will end up giving up when times get tough. For most of our clients their “why” is a combination of things. It can be a lack of inventory making our clients feel like they have to build to get what they want. It can be the desire to have something uniquely theirs. It can be proving others wrong and using construction to obtain a home that others told them was not possible. Your home is a symbol of your status, and building your own home is another level of status that not everyone can achieve. Let’s face it, building a new home is often more expensive than purchasing a comparable home that is for sale. If you don’t have a strong why established for your custom home journey, it won’t happen. Financial reasoning will win out and you will end up settling for another cookie cutter home with a white picket fence.
What Are Your Musts?
When you decide to build a custom home you are working with a blank canvas. Do you want a 5,000 square foot home or do you want 2,000? Do you want four bedrooms or is two enough? Having a clear identification of what you “must” have is important when you dive into the custom home building process. What we see happen often is sacrifices are made throughout the design process. Worse yet, fatigue happens to our clients and they start making the basic selections. Taking the time to understand your musts early in the process will allow you to design the home that you want. More importantly, establishing your must list allows you to verify if you can afford to build a custom home. This leads us into the third question you need to have an answer for.
Is Your Budget Realistic?
Interestingly enough, when clients contact me as their lender they are very open about their budget. Clients know exactly what they want to spend on their financing and they are often confident about being able to build a home for the amount in their head. However, when my clients talk to me as their home builder, they tend to be unsure of what their budget is. I challenge my clients that are building a custom home to be very clear on what they want (Their musts) and establishing a budget as early as possible. As a home builder I am going to put in 6 to 24 months worth of work with you developing your plan set specifications. The last thing I want to do is find our we were working on a project that was way over your budget. I am going to push to get us to a very finite number for your budget so that we can design something with our architectural team that can hit the budget. Your job is to verify if that budget that we establish can get you the home that is full of your musts. If we hit your budget, but design a home that is half of your expectations, it will be disappointing.
At SG Home Builders we will challenge you to make sure your mind is ready to build a custom home. The reality is, custom home building isn’t for everyone. We want to make sure your why is strong early in the process and check it out as we dig deeper into the process. Then we will continuously check in on your dream home, your must list. Are we checking all of the boxes? Have we designed a home that you are proud of? Finally, throughout the process we will remind you of what your original budget was and where things are trending. During some point in the process we will make you very uncomfortable with the budget. You will have to tap into your why, and your must list and balance your budget to keep things on track. At the end of the process, you will enjoy your new home, we can guarantee that. However, understanding these three questions early on helps make the journey enjoyable along the way.
Are you looking for more information about how you can build a custom home? If so, please call Ryan at 847-602-7641 or email Ryan@SGHomeBuilders.com.