There are many ways to approach the construction of a new Houston custom house. One of the most popular methods is referred to as “build on your lot”.
This is when an owner who wants to build a custom house is driven by the desire of owning or purchasing a house site for the intent to build on your lot custom home build.
The owner may or may not already own the land, but they are in fact motivated to build a lot in Houston.
There is a number of matters that the owner should attend to prior to and after getting the land under contract.
Learn How Houston Home Builders Prepare Owners to Build on Your Lot
The summary for steps to build on your lot are the following;
- Develop Your Conceptual Home Budget
- Build Your Design Build Team
- Review Relevant Property Documents
- Inspect the Property
- Secure Your Financing
- Design Your Home Plans
- Build Your Custom Home
Develop Your Conceptual Home Budget
There are a number of things you should do before you actual submit an offer on the lot and a number of things that should be done before you close on the property.
Developing an all-in construction cost, building site improvement conceptual budget is a must due before making the offer for the purchase of the house site.
This provides you some assurance that your project is financially feasible and that you can arrange both construction financing and a mortgage when construction is complete.
The conceptual budget also provides you and your design team a working benchmark to house design to build on your lot.
As your designer is creating your preliminary floor plan and homes elevations, your home builder is refining your budget by developing itemized cost line items and product selection allowances.
As the house design drawings are being finalized by the home designer, the new home construction budget will be ready to finalize funding.
This provides confidence that the home design can be built for the projected total construction cost and supplies you with the required documents for your lender and inking your agreement with your builder.
Build Your Design Build Team
The design team is a collaboration of either an architect or a house designer and your Houston home builder.
Their primary responsibility is to provide the owner with relevant information, facilitation of the design and gate keeping for the construction budget.
The results of these efforts should be a house that represents the owner’s vision at a responsible and anticipated cost.
It is not essential that you actual select your Houston home builder and designer before you close on the land contract to build on your lot.
But it is essential that you complete your due diligence on the primary professionals you are considering hiring. This is important for a number of reasons.
First that you will have the resources available for your trusted advisers to guide you through the conceptual construction budget process to obtain the high confidence budgeted construction cost.
Secondly, to have your builder as a resource to support your future house site due diligence to build on your lot.
Thirdly, your lender will want to know that you are developing this project under the watchful direction of house building professionals while you build on your lot.
Review Relevant Property Documents
This task is essential to complete prior to closing on the property purchase. The relevant documents including an updated property survey, a current certified copy of the deed restrictions and a soil analysis.
If you want to be cautious, it is also a good idea to test your soil for radon when you build on your lot.
These documents will provide your design team the essential information and design criteria to keep the home design within compliance of the property building guidelines for the design approving authorities.
The survey can be used to position the house for proper orientation and placement to comply with set back and deed restrictions.
The soil analysis can be analyzed for soil plasticity, water table levels and determine the need of foundation bearing capacity.
Inspect the Property
It is also important to have your house builder review and evaluate your building site. The builder will evaluate conditions such as fill dirt requirements, drainage, utility access, tree preservation and construction storage/access.
An experienced Houston builder can prepare an owner with unforeseen issues and expenses required to make the lot buildable.
This is extremely relevant when assessing the suitability of a property for a large and expensive house.
Discovering if the property has previously flooded or had easements granted that were not properly recorded can save the owner a great expense and hassle in the future.
Identifying buried and abandoned devises like old underground tanks or drain fields can give an owner the proactive ability to resolve at the expense of the seller.
It is uncommon to find available ready to build on your lot home sites in Houston. More often the owner will need to purchase a lot with a tear down house to build on.
Secure Your Financing
It is essential to complete your interim and permanent financing before you close on your property transaction.
This is required to make it easier on your lender to secure the proper priority liens and obtain clear title at closing.
This practice also allows for a clean and quick financial transaction shifting between financing instruments.
Each lender will have their own set of compliance requirements for dispersing progress draw funds.
It is important that the lenders requirements are consistent with the house builders contract payment terms, so to avoid any progress stoppages or conflicts during construction.
The lender will typically use a third-party inspector for draw request inspections.
It is worth mentioning that lenders will require a complete set of architectural plans and a copy of your builders executed contract before issuing final loan approval.
But it is in the owner’s interest to get preliminary loan approval early in the preconstruction process to avoid the frustration of a long-drawn-out construction loan approval process.
Design Your House Plans
It is not required to have the custom home plans drawn before the land transaction closing.
It is required that the homes footprint fit on the lot without encroaching on easements or setback requirements.
Completing the house design plans is key to completing the construction budget. These completed documents are required to have prior to completion of your construction financing as previously mentioned.
An essential time-consuming task and a source of frequent budget concerns is the selections of various finish products, such as flooring, kitchen appliances, cabinets and plumbing fixtures.
Due to the length of time that is often required by this process your custom home builder will develop budget allowances.
These product allowances consist of a list of products or total amounts of square footage to purchase the required materials.
They should be based on a previously discussed product quality standard. These product qualities and quantities are used to reach a total line-item dollar allowance amount.
Hence allowing the owner more time to make the final product selections.
Build Your Custom Home
The construction of your custom home is the final step in the build on your lot project. There is little difference in the actual construction process for built on your lot versus building on the custom home builder’s lot.
Care should be taken to discuss the owners building process expectations and request for communication practices.
For instance, the house builder and owner should have a clear understanding of what is required of the owner during construction and the most effective methods of alerting each other of issues that may develop during the house building process.
Most importantly your house builder should make you feel welcome and a part of the house building process.
They should discuss the does and don’ts of construction protocols such as avoiding giving subcontractors direction or technical discussions with municipal inspectors while on site.
Providing you mock up samples of the homes features like paint colors and matching exterior wall veneers with roofing material will reduce misunderstandings.
Your builder will schedule benchmark milestones to meet at the home for confirmation that the house you designed and the house you visualized is meeting your expectations and vision.
These are examples of developing effective methods of avoiding unexpected stress and disappointment.
Your house building experience should be a joyous an exciting period in your life.
Conclusion
It is both exciting and enormously rewarding to build on your lot, but requires the discipline to stay focused on your goals and to surround your self with trusted professionals to guide you through the long process.
Most important you need to maintain your patience taking the home building journey. The process is long and requires the owner to be actively involved in each step of the process.
Though purchasing your own house site and building your home from your imagination is surely gratifying.
