Building a new home can be overwhelming, and when you’re building a custom home it can be downright scary, and too often people give up before they even get started! So, in order to alleviate some of this frustration and confusion, we’ve started our ‘How to Build a Quality Custom Home’ series to try to inform anyone interested in starting a new custom home project.

This week we’ll be focusing on the top mistakes to avoid when starting your custom home project.

  • Focusing on a floor plan – When you work with a custom home builder you’re not simply purchasing a floor plan, you’re partnering with a firm. The firm will design and build a home that fits your needs and established budget. Too often we see people getting so caught up on the floor plan that they can’t proceed with the rest of the project. Of course, a good floor plan is absolutely necessary for a well-designed home, it’s the first step! Just make sure you don’t get stuck on that one step.
  • Choosing the Lowest Bid – Building a custom home is a big project, and it’s only natural to try to save money wherever possible. However, although saving money during a big project such as this seems appealing, choosing to go with the lowers bid often ends in disaster for you as the consumer. Stay tuned for a post featuring Choosing a Builder where I will go over question to ask potential candidates and find the perfect builder.
  • Not allowing enough time – We’re all busy, between family, work, friends, hobbies, and everything in between it can be difficult to allow any additional time to trying to build a home. However, if you’re really interested in building your dream home you need to understand that it takes both money and time. It may seem like you can just pass the work on to the design team and builders, but if you want to ensure that your home is exactly what you want, you’ll need to invest the time.
  • Settling on a used house – If you’re interested in building a custom home, there’s a good chance that you’ve already looked at some nice used homes on the market right now. The used homes may be attractive because they’re already build and are priced lower than building a new home from scratch. However, you need to keep in mind that when you buy a used home, you’re likely to ‘invest’ thousands in repairs and remodeling projects to get the home ‘nearly’ the way you’d like it, but in the end you’ll still be living in someone else’s dream home, and will likely have spent more money on the used home in the long run than you would have if you had spent more upfront on your personalized dream home.

This was only one building and designing a quality custom home tip. If you’d like to read more tips check back at our blog every now and then. Or, if you want all of the info NOW, sign up for our FREE planning guide where you can find this information and more! Secrets to Building a Quality Custom Home.