One of the biggest goals for many individuals is to build their dream home from scratch. If you’re serious about achieving this dream, you have likely prepared your finances to back up the costs of building a new home. Perhaps, the only thing that’s hindering you is the nitty-gritty of the construction itself.
It would be best if you plan your dream home. To ensure that your project will be as smooth-sailing and problem-free as possible, you need to complete the home construction checklist below:
- Pick Out Contractors
Don’t ever think that home construction planning will be a walk in the park once you have secured your financing. Many problems can crop up during the whole house construction process, particularly in the building stages.
To mitigate these problems, you must find a contractor that can provide you a complete package and assist you from start to finish. If you’re from Melbourne, you might want to check out trusted, comprehensive project management companies like Costas Constructions.
The things that you should look for in a contractor include:
- Reference and good reviews from past clients
- Necessary licenses and permits to operate
- Backed by insurance
- Bonded for your protection against damages
- Flexible
- Can work within your budget
- Select The Right Design
Before you even buy the land and secure financing for your dream home, you must have an idea of how your future house will look like. You can be as imaginative as you can when it comes to the appearance of your home, but you must seriously consider its engineering and structural design. You want your house to be beautiful and maybe even a bit unique, but factoring in good structural design and framing is essential for the safety of your home’s future occupants – you and your family.
If you don’t have a style or design in mind, you can hire an architect. Contractors also typically have home design templates in their arsenal. Picking from a design catalog may be a good idea if you’re on a tight budget or want to have your house built at the soonest possible time.
- Know Construction Costs
Typically, the most expensive portion of the new home building is framing. As it’s the structure of your home, you don’t want to skimp on the design and integrity of your home’s framing. That said, your new home’s construction costs could go up, depending on the following factors:
- Floor area
- Number of rooms
- Location of the property
- Type of materials
- Interior
- Secure Permits
Before you can start building a house, you need to know what types of permits and licenses are required. These will depend on your property’s location and the scope of your project. The processing time for a building permit may take days or weeks.
You must know what documents are required ahead of time so that the filing process for your permits would be hassle-free. You can also ask your contractor for guidance when securing your building permit.
- Determine Timeline
Constructing a house from scratch is not an easy feat, so asking a contractor to finish within a few weeks may not be feasible. If you’re planning to have a new home built, you should have a reasonable timeline for the project.
For a small house, you can expect two to three months of construction time. However, an average-sized building may take between 9 to 12 months. Of course, if you want a big house with many rooms and a complicated design, construction can stretch from 18 to 24 months.
When planning your move-in, it would be a good idea to give your contractor several days of elbow room to address problems that could affect the project’s completion. The weather, materials, workforce, job site accidents, and even a global pandemic can all affect the timeline of your home construction.
- Prepare For The Unexpected
As mentioned above, your timeline can turn awry due to several factors. However, there are other things you should prepare for and consider. A lot of unknowns can come up during construction.
It would be a good idea to manage your expectations and, most importantly, to prepare for eventualities. One of the things that you must prepare for is the budget for contingencies. Prices of construction materials could suddenly go up, so you should be ready if the project goes over the budget. It would be best to prepare for an alternative plan because the design you like may not be feasible, or the material you want may no longer be available.
Bottomline
There are a lot of things that you need to consider before you build a new home. To minimise problems and hiccups during the process, you may want to prepare a home construction checklist. It’ll be a list of the things you need to consider for your dream home construction project.
