6 Mistakes to Avoid When Building Your Dream Home

You have decided to build your dream home, you have an image painted in the back of your mind and you’re ready to put your plan into action, or are you?

Countless hours will be spent reading over house designs and floor plans until you find ‘the one’. There are snippets of magazine pictures of your ideal kitchen stuck on your fridge and a file of design ideas, potential luxury home builders and quotes from Architects under your bed.

Turning your dreams into reality can be exciting, but it can also be daunting, stressful and exhausting with the amount of time, energy and money that is involved. Don’t worry, we’re here to help put things into perspective and remind you of some key factors you may have forgotten in the excitement.

1. Jumping the Gun

Planning is the most important element of building your dream home and while most people dig deep in their research, it can be easy to jump into attack mode too early.

Taking time to research both online and in person is vital. Meet with professionals, ask questions, obtain quotes and compare. Builders and architects are trained to help you make effective decisions and guide you as to where you shouldn’t cut corners and where you can save money.

Planning ahead includes early decision making and choosing everything from the floor to the ceiling before the builder asks. Money and time can be wasted during the building stage if contractors are waiting on you to make final decisions. When you know what you want, stick to it – making changes to an existing structure later can be costly and a huge headache.

2. Short Term Thinking

When designing your home, the plan is to stay there for a long time. What many people forget is to look past their current and future lifestyles, and right through to when the time comes to sell.

Your home should grow with you. Your lifestyle will change over time so designing a home that can adapt to this is essential. Consider your needs now and how they are going to change over the next 10 -30 years. Take family planning into consideration. Building your dream home will be based initially on what you want, but it’s also an investment, so putting thought into how your choices will affect the resale value of your home is necessary.

3. Savings and Financial Holes

Your journey to saving for your dream home starts in understanding the housing market. The importance of research is highlighted in the planning stages and knowing the buyer’s market helps you identify existing competition and any unprecedented opportunities you can use. In the excitement and busyness of putting your plan into action, it can be easy to cut the research stage short.

Hunt for special deals, negotiable land prices and keep comparing. The more quotes you obtain, the more options you have, so don’t limit yourself to only two or three – keep hunting!

4. Over and Under Building

Once you have chosen your desired area and land, consider the rest of the community and build a home that is comparable in style and size. While you want a home that has its own appeal and character, you also want it to blend with the area which will help your resale value in the future.

5. House Plans

When choosing your plan, consider unnecessary costly upgrades and renovations and minimize expenses by crossing off unnecessary expensive features. Custom cabinets and multiple-pitch roof lines can raise the price by thousands, so be wary of plans with ‘open to below’ options. Recognize the expensive features you want but can save for later, rather than rolling everything into your mortgage loan.

6. Room Placement

It may seem obvious, but adequate attention doesn’t always go into room placement. You want bedrooms as far away from noise as possible and ideally the master bedroom shouldn’t share a wall with the main living area. The kitchen should be placed near a main point of entry, like the garage for the convenience of bringing groceries in and because it’s a high traffic area, it’s practical to divert foot traffic from walking through the main living areas.

Only you know your family’s needs and lifestyle routines, so even though allowing professionals to guide you with suggestions is important, no one can tell you what you do and don’t need. Keep an open mind with design and building suggestions but stay firm and consistent in your decision making.

Author Bio
Thanks to Jayde Ferguson who writes for Riverstone, Perth’s finest luxury home builders, for this article.