As we move into a brand new year – 2021, you may be thinking about building your dream home. Both home buying and home building carry with them a flurry of requirements, steps, and processes that should be given careful thought before you get started.
First of all, you should think about contacting a local, reliable builder who specializes in new homes and can help you build your own. A helpful, experienced builder will be able to guide you through the process step by step from beginning to end.
But even in the initial planning stage, there are a number of considerations to keep in mind – including these:
1. Formulate A Home Building Budget
Everyone who undertakes to build his/her own home has to work from a budget. This gives you a framework within which to work and plan and helps you to figure out where you can save money and where you want to invest your biggest expenditures.
Begin by finding out how large of a building loan you can qualify for. The lender will take into account your total annual income, your current financial obligations and debts, and your credit history.
Most banks right now are pretty generous about home building loans, so you can most likely qualify. But you also have to ask yourself how much you are comfortable owing and for how long. And you need to plan on the project costing at least 10% more than planned due to unexpected costs that inevitably come up.
2. Decide On Your New Home’s Location
You want to look carefully at the 2021 forecast for the housing market in each local area, such as the North Texas Panhandle. The best place to build won’t be determined solely by cost, but you want to plan (usually) on 20% to 25% of the total cost going toward the purchase of the lot.
Proximity to your workplace, schools, relatives’ houses, and amenities and the safety and desirability of the neighborhood must be considered, of course. But don’t forget to look into things like zoning rules, building codes, drainage, and soil conditions as well.
And pay some attention to landscaping issues or to what you would like to do with the landscaping and how much that will add to the total cost of home building.
3. Dig Deep Into Home Design & Outfitting
There are many pre-made, standard home designs you can find online, and even a custom home builder would use a number of “starting point” floor plan options that you can adjust. Or, you can make your own floor plan 100% from scratch if you wish.
Custom homes will take more work to figure out as to exact plan, material and labor cost estimates, and what it will cost to furnish and “outfit” each room. But it’s worth it! You get exactly what you want.
You will need to make a list of must-haves and should-haves, calculate costs for each element of the new house, and even calculate it out room by room. You will need a system for organizing and tracking expenses. And you may have to trim down your original design if it gets too far out of budget. Home building is a process, and that’s normal.
Finally, you will need to plan on how to sell your current home, and you may want to consider a home trade-in program to simplify and speed up the process, while avoiding the possibility of a period where you carry two mortgages or have stressful deadlines to meet.To learn more on how to get started on building a new house in the year 2021, contact the professionals at Experience Homes in Amarillo, TX.
