The Benefits of Building a Custom Home

The major advantage in building a custom home is that you get a completed home that ideally meets your needs, both in terms of function and quality.

Today most spec homes are built using “builder’s grade” products in order to minimize cost and maximize profits for both the builder and real estate agent. As a result, the new homeowner frequently winds up purchasing a home that has products installed, e.g. appliances and cabinets, that have short life expectancies. In addition, with a spec home its pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get (wysiwyg), both in terms of layout and room sizes. Even if you sign a purchase and sales agreement for a to-be-built new home in a new housing development you frequently are limited in house styles, layouts and features.

When building a custom home, on the other hand, you can choose the floor layout and room sizes. In addition, you have the freedom of lot selection, home style, cabinet and flooring selections, window and door choices, siding material and color, lighting, etc. The list goes on. Virtually every feature and product of the home design is for you to decide upon.

Building a fully custom home however, does come at a price. Unique features and products are not sold at “builder grade” prices at box home improvement stores. Consequently you should expect to spend 2 to 3 times more per square foot on construction costs when building a fully custom home.

Alternatively, a semi custom home is a compromise between building a fully custom home and purchasing a spec home. As a result, building a semi custom home provides you with the ability to select some of your home’s features, while not blowing your home budget.

When building a semi custom home, the builder usually presents you with several house styles and floor plans to choose from. In addition, you are usually allowed to select flooring, cabinets, appliances, lighting fixtures and lighting locations. Frequently the flexibility is offered via “budget allowances”. For example a builder may offer you a $2000 kitchen appliance allowance where you choose what kitchen appliances you want installed in the home’s kitchen. If you decide to purchase appliances in excess of the allowance then you pay the additional costs out of your pocket.

In addition, when building a semi custom home you will frequently have the opportunity to select various building options such as attached garages, family rooms, unfinished rooms and even deck sizes.

Deciding to build a custom home is not for the faint of heart. Even if you have selected a great architect and builder you will be required to do a lot of work and make a lot of choices. Expect to spend many a day at kitchen and bath centers, flooring stores, lighting stores, etc. You will need to make decisions on many aspects of your custom home that you would not otherwise have a chance to do if purchasing a spec home. However, for most homeowners choosing the path of building a custom home is a positive experience. Everyday they live in the custom home they get to appreciate the choices that they made during the building of their custom home.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Building a custom modular home is much easier and far less expensive than a stick-built home. You have components to choose from, and they are assembled in a controlled-environment using state-of-the-art computerized equipment.]

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By Mark Donovan

Technorati Tags: custom modular homes, modular homes builders, modular homes floor plans

Modular home price details can be obtained upfront from the builder, and in great detail. One of the nice things about building a home in a factory is that all costs are readily transparent, with few contingencies.

We actually saw a smaller version of a log modular home on the east coast, got the logs from the Pacific Northwest, had it hand-hewn in Tennessee,  and built it in Colorado. There were few surprises in the home itself, most prices were spot on.

However, there were a number of very expensive "surprises" at the other end … with the foundation, excavation, septic system, and landscaping. These cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Why?

Because we made a huge mistake in the person we hired to do our general contracting. 

Things started off good … we had some common interests, he and his wife were very nice, things looked good.

Except, whenever we talked about pricing, he would never quite answer our questions. "What will be the price of our modular log home?" "Is it possible to change our modular home’s floor plans?" "What will be the final modular home cost?"

And then came bigger problems.

Like the excavation. Before hiring the general contractor, I had been doing the job myself. I had actually found an excavator who had been doing this work for 50 years, and who gave me an estimate of $19,000 plus any dynamiting necessary (we were building high in the mountains). 

My contractor said, "no, no … we’ll use my excavator … it will be better, and he’ll be available if we have any changes." And there were a LOT of changes … like, the first time they dug the basement, we figured out that our front porch and door would be almost 10′ off the ground, because they had not dug deep enough. The contractor said, "oh, guess we didn’t go deep enough." So they hauled the equipment up the mountain again, and excavated for a few days. This time, it would have resulted in our front porch would only be about 6 feet off the ground. Absolutely rediculous. So they dug again, another couple of times.

About three weeks into the process, the contractor gave us his bill for the excavation. $78,000.

Though we were furious, our modular log home was on its way from Tennessee, and we had no other option than to continue (and pay the bill).

There were many other episodes … like when the contractor measured everything, and was ready to start building out the basement and wood foundation … had my wife not checked, we would have ended up with a 6′4" ceiling in our kitchen. The contractor didn’t see this as that big of a problem. I’m 6′4", he was 5′8".  Guess it wouldn’t have bothered him too much.

Then there was the map I gave him, highly detailed as to where he could dig things up on the property, and where we wanted it to remain natural. Guess what got destroyed, and what was saved? You got it, the exact opposite of what I had given him.

(One such area was the septic field … I had asked that he build it off several hundred feet from the home, and told him I was fine with the price as it would leave the back of our home natural and pristine. Do I have to tell you where he built it? That’s right … in back of the house. When I complained, he said he had built it there to save me money and that he could "move it" to where I wanted it. He didn’t seem to quite understand that the damage was already done …)

Ultimately, there was a happy ending to the story. I finally fired the contractor, spent a ton more money to fix what he had messed up, and we moved into an incredible log home, that while it cost more than it should have, was an incredible modular home price.

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