The Essential Guide to Building Your Custom Home
When you choose to build a custom home, there’s so much to decide and do that it’s easy to start feeling overwhelmed. Understanding what to expect from the experience will go a long way towards helping you feel confident as you embark on this adventure.
This 3-part checklist is aimed at getting you on the right track and providing an overview of the process.
Getting Started
You may have considered building your own custom home for a while, or perhaps you are just starting to think about it. The first things to consider would be setting a budget, determining your timeframe, and finding the property for your custom home.
A few things to keep in mind when looking at land:
- The size of the lot
- Closeness of neighbors
- Slope/flatness of land
- Direction the plot faces
- Natural surroundings
- Style of other homes in the neighborhood
- Having a view versus privacy
Talk to a Professional! Although it is not necessary, having a professional contractor look at the property you are interested in may save your some headaches down the line by ensuring you can do what you want on that piece of land.
Designing Your Custom Home
You can choose from a contractors set of pre-designed homes and tweak them from there OR design a home from scratch to match your families needs. The questions and suggestions in this section will help you as you begin your conversations with an architect.
- How big should your home be?
- What space do you have to work with on the property?
- How many stories do you want your home to be?
- What rooms do you need?
- What aspects of your lifestyle do you want to be built into your home?
- Do you want an open layout or separate spaces?
- What structural features do you want in each room? (closets, bathrooms, etc)
- What are your style and design preferences?
- Are there any special features you want to be included? (fireplaces, heated floors, etc.)
Assembling Your Team
Deciding on an architect will be the first step to assembling your custom home building team. They’ll be there to not only direct your vision but help you sort through what is and isn’t possible based on your land, budget, and timeframe.
And then the final step to assembling your team will be to choose a general contractor. Your contractor will be the one to bring your home to life; they are there when you aren’t, making sure everything goes according to plan. This is someone you have to trust and with whom you communicate well with. Hiring the right general contractor is vital to being happy with your custom home.
Are you ready to build the custom home of your dreams?
Custom luxury homebuilding is our passion! With Riken as your builder, you will get a high-performing team that is singularly focused on delivering an extraordinary home while exceeding your expectations along the way.
As your builder, we will:
- Remain responsive and attentive to your needs
- Keep construction on schedule
- Closely monitor project budget
- Keep you continually updated on project progress
- Coordinate the selection process
- Be a good steward of your resources
- Remain positive and professional at all times
- Mobilize and manage our vendors and subs
- Proactively solve construction issues as they arise
- Maintain job site safety standards and controls
- Deliver a high-quality home that exceeds your expectations