Selecting a house contractor is a complicated and challenging proposition for even the most experienced new home construction customers. Navigating the lot purchase, the selection of the custom home designer and house contractor is both time consuming and difficult.
When the owner develops a plan of action with the guidance of a professional house contractor it is likely to contribute enormously to producing effective results.
There is both professional and personal criterion that should be evaluated during the selection process. The personal aspects involved have to do with how the owner interacts during the home building process with their house contractor.
While the professional features mainly focus on the builder’s competencies. We will discuss a few of the most important characteristics and methods employed early in the house design and custom home building.
How to a Selection House Contractor and Plan Building a New Home
Understanding Your Personal New Home Construction Needs
Preparing for new house construction begins with the owner getting a clear perspective of their personal and professional home building needs. These items include understanding your architectural preferences, required living square footage and the priority featured amenities.
The architectural preferences speak to the design style of your future house, interior and exterior features. Identifying a collection of house photo images goes a long way in communicating your specific design ideas to your design team. These images can be entered into a collage to translate a variety of special home design items.
Understanding your lifestyle needs will also contribute to your house design. The design team armed with the way your family lives in a luxury home can develop a floor plan that makes your new custom house fit your needs like a tailored suit.
The custom house should also complement the home building site by capturing the best views with window placement and solar orientations.
Determining the square footage requirements becomes a combination of your lifestyle needs and your target construction budget.
The target construction budget needs to defined by realistic parameters such as the minimum square footage, while your lifestyle needs to visibly specify the functional value.
These two critical elements need to be carefully balanced to achieve the best desired house design results.
The professional needs speak to your requirements for a professional adviser team, namely the house contractor and architect. The proper vetting requires the ability to distinguish between one of a kind architectural plan and off the shelf modified design plans.
The more unique the home design, the more specialized your selection of professional you will need. Having a good understanding of your professional’s project house contracting history will help guide you through developing a priority list for hiring both your architect and home building house contractor.
Develop a Trusted House Contractor Adviser Team
The luxury house design team consist of a house contractor, architect and product selection coordinator / decorator. In some cases, your home design needs may dictate the need for a landscape architect to assist with the creation of a landscape, pool deck and flatwork plans.
The design teams’ primary purpose is to guide the owner through the house design, home building and decorating process while delivering a quality product.
The design team should be selected as early in your plan design process as possible. This provides the owner with a sounding board and advisory committee for responsible direction for the owner’s decision-making requirements.
These items include factors such as the lot purchase, house design, construction cost, color coordinating and decoration / space planning.
Your custom home building house contractor can also be of assistance with arranging the needed financing for the land purchase, construction loan and mortgage.
It is essential that the members selected for the design team be willing and capable of cooperation and collaboration during the design build mission. One disruptive member can derail the entire design team and can set the project back substantially.
It is essential that there is an open and respectful exchange of ideas and assessments of cost-effective design value engineering that serves the clients budget goals.
Value engineering can often cause strife between the custom house designer and custom home builder. This is due to their very different project agendas.
The custom house designer is attempting to design unique features to demonstrate his creative abilities and the custom home builder’s primary concern his answering for the schedule, quality and building cost of the new house construction project.
House contracting is the service of interpretation of home plans not the creation of house design.
Many owners have experienced selecting extremely talented professionals that did not collaborate well together. This will normally result in extreme tension during design meeting that leads to counterproductive results.
Poor team interaction places the owner in a very difficult position and can turn a dream luxury home experience into a nightmare.
How to Vet Your Custom Home Building House Contractor
Selecting your custom home building house contractor is key to the success of your future project. They play an important part in developing the construction cost, value engineering design alternatives and the overall construction expertise in the team through general contracting practices.
Vetting the initial selection of custom home builders as candidates is a critical part of the due diligence process. This starts with establishing your custom builders’ qualifications and credentials.
- Does the custom builder have the experience with the style and Houston architecture of the home you are interested in building?
- Do they have a personality and professional demeanor that you can work with?
- Does the custom builder present a business approach that provides integrity and transparency?
Clearly understanding such matters provides the owner with a real time and better insights of what it will be like to work with their luxury home builder. The ability to discuss difficult topics in a constructive manner provides the foundation for an effective professional relationship.
The ability of owner and their builder to resolve their differences in a positive and effective way during construction challenges is essential to enhance a quality owner experience.
Establishing performance expectations with your builder concerning construction is a must. There are many tasks that are required in achieving these goals. Defining a project construction schedule with milestones for inspections and payment is always a requirement.
The execution of a contract agreement that outlines the details of change orders, the scope of work and terms and conditions performance provides the ultimate answer if the relationship fails.
What to Expect During New Home Construction from Your House Contractor?
Builders vary dramatically in their services offered during design, pre-construction, construction and warranty periods. General contracting responsibilities vary substantially during new home construction.
It is critical that an owner question their house contractor in depth about their methods and procedures during each phase of the custom home construction service experience.
Some custom home builders will only bid a complete set of plans and do not offer design services. Other builders require the owner to use their in-house design team. While another group of general contractors only work with architects and designers, they have direct experience with.
So, it is important to discuss what your house contractor is both experienced and comfortable with in their companies’ operations.
While most custom home building house contractors will provide owners with a bid on a complete set of plans. There is a much smaller group that is willing to work with an architect to value engineer the plans if the bids come in unacceptably over budget. This is another reason it is important to have a builder that is a part of the design team.
The material issues the owner needs to understand when working with a custom home builder during construction are who will actually be responsible for day-to-day quality control.
Most custom home builders hire onsite superintendents to manage, schedule and inspect the custom house construction as a standard procedure of general contracting.
Another notable difference is how does the owner interact with the builder during different phases of new home construction.
- Are there scheduled meetings?
- Is there a procedure for notifying your builder of activities that are troubling you?
- How will the process work for making changes?
It is also essential to have your custom builder provide you with a written warranty and a copy of their insurance. The owner should have a detailed discussion about the limitation and exception clauses in these instruments. These are documents that are often overlooked until an issue arises.
Selecting your home building house contractor requires research and effort on your part as an owner.
The benefits of you investing your time and energy will result in dividends throughout the entire home building process. The reward of making these efforts is that the owner will likely have a much more enjoyable experience and better finished product.
Conclusion
The custom home building house contractor is key to the owner’s success in the new home construction journey. Custom home builders provide the owner leadership through the home construction process. It is through the professional house contracting management that serves the owner’s interest in delivering a luxury house. For a complete understanding of the custom home builder.
