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4 Ways to Avoid Costly Building Mistakes with Your New Home

Building a custom home from the ground up is an exciting and rewarding process, and it’s also a significant financial endeavor. After all, you are designing a home to your exact specifications that will keep you and your family comfortable and safe for a lifetime. That’s certainly worth the investment. 

Every homebuyer, though, has a budget, and it’s important to stick to it to avoid stress and frustration on everyone’s part. If you’re familiar with the saying “measure twice, cut once,” we like to say, “Plan twice, build once!” With planning and careful consideration of a number of factors, you can easily avoid costly building mistakes with your new home.

Costly Building Mistakes to Avoid

1) Avoid Overly Trendy Designs and Features

While a new home should be modern in style and function, it’s sometimes best to avoid designs and features that are both overly trendy and expensive, like certain tile patterns or wall accents. In the event that they go out of style quickly, or that you get tired of them, it can cost a lot of money to change them down the road. Stick to classic designs and features that you know will be in style for at least 15 years; otherwise, you may find yourself doing an expensive renovation sooner than anticipated. 

2) Don’t Make Last Minute Structural Changes

Take your time and review your home plans carefully before signing off on them. Once we have your approved and final home design, we get to work right away ordering materials and scheduling contractors. Structural changes made after your plans are complete can result in high costs. It’s more cost efficient to ask your builder to draft two floor plans so you can compare, rather than make significant structural changes after the fact. 

3) Don’t Underestimate How Much Square Footage You Need

Not building as large a home is obviously one way to save money, but once you’ve decided on a home plan, if you decide you need more square footage (similar to making structural changes), it can be quite expensive. Think about both how you live today, what’s NOT working in your current living situation, and what you’ll need to live comfortably 5-10 years from now. If you need an idea of how large a home would work for you, contact us to schedule a tour of one of our in-process new construction homes. 

4) Be Realistic About Your Finances

When it comes to a beautiful new home, it’s very easy for our eyes to be bigger than our wallets! Meet with a lender before you start looking at floor plans to understand how much you can afford, and be honest and realistic about how much you want to spend on a home. You don’t want so much of your money tied up in your home that you can’t enjoy life once you’ve moved in! We want to make sure that you stay within your budget when building with us.

If you’re interested in building a new custom home in the Grand Rapids/West Michigan area, we’d love to be your builder! Heartland Builders’ process is easy, fun, and fast(er than you think). Join us for one of our upcoming events, or contact us to learn more.