Building a house is an exciting way to get the home you have always wanted. Once you find the builder, you get to dig into the fun part of choosing the paint color, the wood stain color, the appliances, floor tile, backsplash tile, countertops, sinks, faucets, and other features that you will enjoy once the house is done and you get to move in.
However, beyond the fun part of the building come important decisions that need to be made along the way. After all, you are investing your hard-earned money into the house so you want to make this a successful venture. Therefore, make sure you do not overbuild for the subdivision where you are building. In other words, if you were to build the biggest and most expensive home in the neighborhood, once you decide to sell someday, you would never get the money out of the house that you put in.
When building, you obviously want to build so you end up with the home of your dreams but make sure you also build for future resale. Whether you stay in the house three years or ten years, chances are there will come a day when you sell. For this reason, while you might only want a two bedroom home, realize that adding one more bedroom, even if small, you will get far more money. The same is true with bathrooms. Instead of going with just one bathroom or one and one half bathrooms, go ahead and build two full baths if you can.
You also want to work with the best builder or contractor you can afford. One of the most important aspects of building is the quality of the work and materials. For this reason, you should interview a number of professionals, finding one that has a good reputation, great references, the same vision as you, and a contractor or builder with whom you get a long because the two of you will be spending many long months together while the house is constructed.
Next, while it would be wonderful if the building process went off without any delays, this is usually not the case. Most often, the building of a home does have delays so expect them and add them into your schedule. As an example, if you have concrete being laid but the weather were to turn cold, the concrete would have to wait until warmer weather. This one delay could snowball into other delays, which again, is all part of the building process.
Finally, we suggest you keep track of the progress and the construction allowances. Never be afraid to visit the building site as often as possible. This way, the builder will know you are monitoring the work being done. In addition, while the construction costs are something the builder should track, you too should know where the money is going.