Building your own home offers a lot of advantages, but the process is vastly different than buying an existing home. To help clients who plan to work with our custom home building team, we’ve put together a brief guide about what to expect during the process. Here’s an overview of what you need to know about home building.
1. Securing Financing
When you decide to hire a custom home builder, the first step you must take is to secure financing. Getting preapproved for a loan isn’t enough. You need to ensure that the loan closes before your home builder can begin construction. Keep in mind that when you build your own home, you usually have to start with a construction loan. While this type of loan tends to have a higher interest rate than a standard mortgage, you can often switch the loan to a traditional mortgage once construction is complete.
2. Choosing a Location
Before you can start building your new home, you need to choose a location. At Passage Island Construction, we offer many new construction sites where you can choose to build the custom home of your dreams. You don’t need to limit yourself to our neighborhoods, however. We can build on nearly any other lot you choose, and our salesperson can also assist in finding the perfect lot. Before you finalize your land purchase, you may want to consult with us to ensure that the lot will work with your desired design.
3. Selecting a Design
Now the process starts to get really fun as you choose a design for your home. To make this process easier, you may want to make a list of some design essentials. Then, we can focus on showing you floor plans that meet those criteria. For instance, if you want three bedrooms and an office, we don’t have to waste time looking at two-bedroom floor plans. Keep in mind, however, that you don’t have to choose a pre-existing design. You can work with our team to design your custom home just the way you’d like it.
4. Narrowing in on the Details
From a timing perspective, these last two steps often tend to overlap. Once the floorplan is complete, you can start to focus on the small details while the home builders get to work on larger decisions like framing and laying the foundation.
Ideally, you should ask questions about this stage before you get here. In particular, while you’re interviewing different home builders, find out which details come standard and which cost extra. This way you know what to expect. Otherwise, you may get to this stage and realize that the details you want (flooring, cabinets, trim etc.) fall outside of your budget.
5. Building the Home
You will want to ensure that you are satisfied with your design plans before your custom home builder begins construction, as it’s hard to make changes at this point. If you’d like to visit the home site while it’s under construction, please schedule a time with your home builder and have them accompany you to the site to ensure that any questions you have can be answered.
There can be a learning curve when you’re working with a custom home builder, but at Passage Island Construction, we strive to make the process as easy as possible for our clients. Contact us today. We would love to work with you.