Building custom homes requires the services of an experienced Houston custom builder that understands both design and construction.
These uniquely designed one-of-a-kind high-end custom homes need the special niche that comes with luxury home building skills that only are available with seasoned custom builders.
The new home construction process can cause a great deal of stress and anxiety for even the most experienced custom home building owners.
The custom building process has many moving parts to coordinate and is an emotionally charged experience for the owner.
There is no shortage of detailed decisions to be progressively made over the entire course of the design and construction process.
The journey of building a custom home can take anywhere from 18 months to 3 years to complete from the engagement of the design team to the completion of new home construction.
For most owners, there is a substantial emotional investment when it comes to designing and building a new house that reflects their lifestyle and stature.
It is important that the builder and owner are open with each other about what to expect during the design and house building process.
Learn about the non-contractual potential issues of building on your lot custom home in Houston
We will present a discussion concerning how Houston custom builders address these and many other issues during the design and construction of a custom home.
Summary Index of Important Custom Home Building Issues
- Aligning Expectations of Owner with Builder
- Time Commitment on Behalf of Owners
- Not Being Overwhelmed by the Process
- Controlling the Construction Budget
- Expecting Quality Results
- Expecting Responsive Customer Service
Aligning Expectations of Owner with Builder
Understanding the client’s needs and getting to understand them as people is by far one of the most important tasks your custom home builders will employ during the early stages of the preconstruction process.
During the early stages, the Houston custom builder should be purposely understanding the client’s needs and vigilantly establishing the owner’s expectations for the design and construction of your custom home.
There are performance expectations to address as well as behavioral expectations.
The performance expectations are typically measurable and can be readably defined in accordance with conditional terms.
Behavioral expectations are not so easily defined and are usually the cause for most of the issues during the luxury home building process. These personal expectations break down when the owner and your custom home builders do not talk about such things as methods and means of communication and definitively establish protocols for site meetings during construction.
By the owner and builder taking the time to discuss how to personally interact with each other, a great deal of aggravation and conflict can be avoided.
Establishing a trusting working relationship between the owner and luxury home builders is an essential cornerstone in the assurance of a satisfying and rewarding experience.
Time Commitment on Behalf of Owner
One of the most common misunderstandings that custom home clients have is the required amount of time that is demanded of them to commit to the design and house building process.
There are time commitments required for both the design phase and the construction phase of a custom house.
Prior to the conceptual design phase, the owner is responsible for developing the general parameters for their visionary design needs and their target budget. Without these required elements little progress will take place.
Armed with the approved conceptual floor plan and a clear understanding of the owner’s lifestyle, the design team can proceed with preliminary drawings of the custom home.
During the preliminary design stage, the owner should be identifying their priority product selections.
This practice provides the advantages of giving your home builders the insights to assess representative product selection allowances for your budget and to begin the design plan personality characterization.
This period of design time requires a great deal of time commitment as the interior design materializes.
There are many decisions to be made and approved before the preliminary design drawings can be properly finalized. Click on the link for more information about the building design process.
The time commitments continue during the construction phase of your custom home. There are scheduled site visits, product mock up and shop drawing approvals to be made.
These include such things as color splotch approvals, floor design layout approvals, and millwork profiles to be approved.
In addition, this does not include the required time for selecting fabrics for furniture and draperies or the time required for future artwork or accessorizing appointments.
Not Being Overwhelmed by the Process
The owner understanding their personal availability and capacity for decision making and managing the time limitations is key to managing the anxiety and stress that the custom house building process can create.
The challenge does not begin with the design and construction of your luxury house, but when life serves up issues with work or children. Collectively the entire experience can get very overwhelming and turn unpleasant for all concerned quickly.
This is when it is important for the owner to be honest with themselves about their time limitations.
Appointing the proper support professionals to the design team such as interior decorators and landscape architects can greatly reduce the owner’s personal time commitment.
If properly vetted these additional advisors can streamline the owner’s time commitment and add value to the project’s goals and efficiency.
Controlling the Construction Budget
When the owner elects to use the design to bid method for custom house building, there is inherently an increasing level of anxiety to control the construction budget.
This is a natural conflict that occurs as owners include more of the amenities on their wish list or choose to upgrade products not selected for their allowance schedule.
There are very few situations where the budget accountability is not an issue. Regardless of the overall size of the budget, there is someone that should be accountable to monitor and approve deviations from the preconstruction budget.
Controlling the budget is important for several additional reasons other than the obvious. In most cases, there is financing arranged for the owner’s custom house construction.
This includes the progress payments for the homes construction and rolls into a permanent predetermined mortgage instrument upon completion.
Due to this financing structure, most construction cost overruns will be required to be paid out of pocket.
This can cause issues if unanticipated cash flow periods collide with construction cost overruns.
One of the advantages of owners using the design build approach is that luxury house builders are accountable for facilitating a design that fits within the construction budget range. This method of building a custom home can substantially reduce the anxiety and stress of budget accountability.
Expecting Quality Results
The greatest concern that most owners have at the commencement of a new home construction process is the level of quality that their house will reflect when complete.
Most owners have a very defined expectation of the quality of workmanship they expect, but cannot always articulate or quantify these standards.
They rely on their personal assessment during the due diligence period of hiring their Houston custom builder.
They have looked at their work or discussed their new home construction practices to a point where they are comfortable that their house builder can deliver the required results.
Luxury house quality is a result of many factors. It starts with the quality of the house plan drawing documents.
The detailed specifications include equal or better product standards, workmanship tolerance standards, and industry association standards.
The most defining quality control factor is the actual luxury home builder you select. Both the onsite inspection process and offsite business organization methods have a major impact on the final finished product.
Luxury home builders know that if the performance standards and their organizational methods are substandard, the subcontractor’s ultimate level of performance will be greatly affected.
It is through the new house construction journey the recognition of all these matters we have presented that will make the difference in your custom home building experience.
By vigilantly addressing their client’s concerns, custom home builders provide these valuable service experiences that distinguish the house building experience.
By builders addressing these matters early in the relationship, they can set the foundation for a trusting and constructive working relationship with the owner.
Expecting Responsive Customer Service
During the design phase, the construction phase, and the warranty phase of your new luxury home, you should expect responsive customer service to your needs.
Customer service can take numerous forms during the different phases of the new house construction experience.
The first is what most people consider the definition of customer service, which means a sincere effort on the part of the builder to address the concerns of its clients when presented.
The second form of customer service is to fulfill the scope of work and contractual commitments made during the contracting phase.
The third form of customer service is for the house builder to be fair and transparent in their dealings with their client. During both good times and adversity.
Conclusion
When preparing to build a custom home it is wise to select an accredited home builder that is an experienced master builder.
The custom building process requires years of developing skills dealing with many different products and methods.
There is a select group of Houston custom builders that can offer their clients the professional luxury home building services they expect.
To learn more about custom house building visit; https://www.marwoodconstruction.com/custom-home-building/
