How to Decide When to Build Your Custom Home

If you could create your own custom home design, what would it include?

Think bigger is better? Think again. According to a Realtor.com survey, more than half of those polled are looking for a relatively modest home. Dream homes don’t have to be big and bold to be the perfect space for you. Instead, dream home designs often incorporate very specific things into very specific places, giving you the space you need to live the lifestyle you desire.

You might want our custom home design to include things like:

An updated kitchen with everything in the right place
A yard and outdoor living space that allows you to play outside
A garage to help keep everything organized and in its place

And that’s just for starters.

Many of us would like to design and build our dream home, a house created just for us. But is that something anyone can afford? And more importantly, where do you begin?

What Custom Home Design Means

In the traditional home building space, the concept of a custom designed home is more expensive than building one from preexisting blueprints because you’re starting from the ground up. Every line, every board, every wall is put into place because you chose to put it there.

But with flexibility and today’s technology, there are many more approaches that can give you a custom home design without the expense.

What if you started with a basic design and made changes according to your lifestyle?

That’s the beauty of our custom home design process. We have over 25 New Generation plans to choose from and thousands of options to personalize your new custom home. You can fast tack with hundreds of our standard features, or move to the custom track to create something personalized and just for you. You get what you want without having to start from scratch.

Sounds good, right? But where should you put your new home?

Choosing Your Location

That’s also up to you.

A report from the National Association of Home Builders found that just over half of all home buyers want to purchase a brand new home. Twenty-eight percent prefer going straight to a builder, while twenty-seven percent prefer a custom build on their own lot.

For some, they enjoy the thought of living in a brand new community. A place where all of your neighbors are moving in too. It gives you a clean look where everything is uniform within the community. Same styles. Same color palette. Same landscaping. Yet on the inside, your home is anything but the same.

Not quite right for you? Looking at property instead? Whether it’s a lot in the middle of town or on acreage out in a rural community, starting with a New Generation plan and customizing it from there gives you a great starting point. No matter where you put down your foundation.

Have your location in mind?

Have your design in mind?

Then maybe it’s time to ask yourself a few more questions before you start building your home.

Do you have the time and patience?

How quickly are you looking to move? It’s easier to find an existing home and move right in. With a custom home design, it takes time to get everything right. You’ll be building from the ground up and that requires both time and patience to get everything into place.

If you go with our standard options, we can easily put them into place. If you customize, it adds time with every change. But even if you stick with more traditional options it can still take several months to go through the entire process. Do you have the patience to see it all through? 

What are your wants and needs?

One of the biggest problems we see when a couple comes in is they have different wants and needs. They’ve never taken the time to consider what’s important to one another. Have you talked about your desires?

At some point, sit down and make a list. List out the features your home has to have, with another column describing your wish list. Then compare lists. By bringing in these requirements early on, you can avoid the trap of falling for things way outside of your reach. It leaves you with the ability to pick and choose what you can’t live without and what you can afford.

Do you have a location?

Have you ever priced out land before? Do you have a lot ready to go? Sometimes people are surprised at how expensive land can be. Take the time to look around and determine if your desires meet your budget. You may love your current neighborhood, but tearing down an old house to make room for a new one may be out of the question.

You should also investigate potential problems with the lot before you sign on the bottom line. How far away are sewer lines from your land? Will you need to install a septic system? Will it be difficult to excavate for laying the foundation? These are all questions you should take into account and talk about before you make your final decision.

Is your lifestyle stable?

Building a custom home means pouring everything you have into the design process. It’s a place you’ll want to keep for a long time to come. The emotional attachment you’ll create during this process means you’ll want to live in it for years. So it’s better if you are ready to put down roots. If there’s a chance your job will change in the near future or you’ll be moving to further your education, you may find this is a lot of work with little time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Have you weighed the pros and cons?

Take your time to make sure everything is right before you make the jump. Building your dream home is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. It’s also one of the most thrilling and difficult processes of your life. Consider all of your options. Weigh the pros and cons of purchasing an existing home versus building a custom design. If the benefits outweigh the issues of time, patience, and budget, then you know you are ready to build.

Have you ever considered building your own custom home? Is now the time? Take a look at all New Tradition Homes has to offer.