When building a new home, controlling costs is the key to staying within budget
It’s safe to say no one likes cost overruns or unpleasant surprises on a project. New home construction is no exception. As a professional builder, we understand how critical it is to establish and maintain a budget that everyone can rely on from groundbreaking to the final walk-through.
The least expensive option may not be the best value.
Choosing a home builder based on the lowest cost per square foot or the lowest sales price may not provide the best value. For an investment so important to your family’s future, the least expensive option can be a risky bet.
Beware the disorganized builder
Investing in the design and construction of a new home is a daunting task—and something most people do just once or maybe twice in a lifetime. The last thing you need is a builder who doesn’t have it together.
Why does that matter? Simply put, homebuilding is an increasingly complex effort.
Tested and proven work, products, and materials
As a professional builder, we understand the importance of meeting or exceeding the expectations of our homebuyers. We stay current with trends in residential design and construction. We offer choices that fit each client’s budget and lifestyle. At the same time, we commit to high quality standards—both for our work and for the components we use to build each new home—and to staying on schedule and within budget.
Partnering with your builder for the best results
Home-building has changed significantly over the last hundred years, especially since the 1950s, when the housing industry boomed after World War II. Building a home in a classic, hands-on way is far from standard practice these days, as home construction has evolved from a trade or craft to a systematized process with many moving parts.
How the best homebuilders insure homeowner satisfaction
Have you heard of a “punch list”? This is construction industry jargon for a checklist of things that need to be completed, repaired or replaced. It’s a quick and easy reference to the status of the work, as well as a useful way to communicate with our trade partners and clients. Most importantly, the punch list is a key tool to make sure our homes meet the high expectations of our custom home buyers.
The best companies build quality assurance systems into their practice.
What separates great builders from good ones? A lot of things do, but part of the answer is that great builders are obsessive about small details. And taken together, those small details leave a big impression.
Most builders really want to do good work for their customers. They strive to craft high-quality homes and respond quickly if the customer has a serious problem like a leak after move-in. At the same time, many builders lack formal systems for finding and correcting small errors during construction and for making sure they don’t happen in the future.
For best results, narrow down the options up front
Allowances—that is, budgeting general costs for items before the specific items are chosen—are a fact of life on many projects. Some homeowners have trouble making decisions before work begins, most commonly for appliances, cabinets, floor coverings, and plumbing and electrical fixtures. In those cases, the builder can assign a dollar amount to each category and let the homeowners choose specific products later.
Quality homes and satisfied customers don’t happen by accident. The best builders have systems to ensure those outcomes.
If you have a complete set of construction documents, including accurate blueprints and product descriptions, then material and labor costs won’t vary much between equivalent professional builders. Most of the price difference will rest with the builder’s fee—the overhead and profit built into the home’s cost.
What does that fee cover? And is a lower fee always better?
Post-contract changes need not be a problem, but they absolutely need a clear process
Professionals who build fantastic homes for satisfied customers share some important traits. One trait is an obsession with details, and another is clearly communicating those details to the homeowners. Great builders are great communicators, and part of being a great communicator is documenting every part of the job.
