Custom home building is designing a home to your own specifications. The alternative is a pre-designed home package. Home packages are standardised so that builders have the ability to build multiple homes in the most efficient way. A challenge of a pre-designed home is that you can end up with unwanted space and compromise on layout and materials. With a custom home, you’ll pick every detail of your home from the layout of the floor plan to the building materials used and the interior components. If you’re starting your home-building journey, read on for the details you’ll need for building a custom home.
What is a custom home?
A custom home is a home designed from scratch, exactly how you imagine it. To build a custom home you’ll work with a building company to design your new home.
The custom home building process
Building a custom home begins with choosing a building company. The building company will have a sales, operations, administration, design and drafting team, and a supervising team that are partnered with local trades and suppliers. These teams work together to construct your home and bring it to life.
You should compose a wish list of all the inclusions you’d like to have in your home. To inspire your wish list, look at your builder’s completed projects. If they have a display home, you can also get ideas from there and take advantage of the opportunity to walk through one of their designs.
Once you’re set on exactly what you want in your design, your chosen builder will quote and design your custom home.
Choosing the right builder
An exceptional builder will be efficient, provide valuable advice that saves you money, accommodate flexibility, and deliver a quality home without blowing your budget.
Having your wish list prepared saves you and the builder time during the initial quotation process. It will also help the sales representative apprehend your needs and provide you with practical advice that will minimise unnecessary expenses.
Custom home budgeting
It’s often thought that custom home building is much more expensive than pre-designed homes by volume builders. However, it can be more cost-effective than making changes to a volume build. Volume builders charge a premium for any deviation from their quoted price and pre-set plans. If there are just a few minor changes, this can blow out a budget. When you have a customised build you can allocate more of your budget to the areas of your home that you want to invest in. For example, the living space or a luxury bathroom.
Selecting the right location and block of land is critical as it influences your overall build price. Site costs can add up for cutting and filling, or retaining walls if they’re required to stop soil from collapsing. Locations can be inflated and overpriced, so always look at lot size and proximity to facilities and recreation over hype. By selecting the right block of land in the right area for you, you can best budget your overall build.
When building your custom home, it can be easy to get caught up in interior design and spend your budget on visual elements. However, aesthetics shouldn’t come at the expense of functionality. You should work to balance functionality with aesthetics so you can achieve a beautiful home that works for you and your family. Interior design can always be worked on down the track so we recommend prioritising your building design.
Construction timeline
Timings for construction will vary depending on variables such as the size, type and complexity of a home, site characteristics and weather conditions. At Enso Homes, our build time for a single-storey custom home is approximately seven months, and ten months for a double. We intentionally extend the duration of our build time by four weeks to accommodate additional quality assurance throughout construction. By taking more time than we could, we’re able to deliver your build to a superior level of quality. Many builders, both volume builders and custom home builders, won’t go to the same level of quality assurance that we do.
Building a custom home
Building a custom home is a rewarding experience that enables you to budget and control your end result, express your sense of style and embrace your lifestyle. Customising your home is an ideal part of home building to invest in and allocate your budget to. You’ll achieve a great result by having a sound idea of what you’re after in your home design and choosing the right builder to bring it to life.
To learn more about custom home builds and what you can achieve with Enso Homes, call us on 03 5240 9300 or message us online.
