If you’re in the market for a new home and you’re looking to buy as opposed to rent, you’ve got one main decision to make before you can proceed with your search: Should you opt to buy a production built home, an existing home that’s on the housing market or would a custom home be a better fit for you? The main difference between the first couple of options and the latter is fairly obvious; with custom homes you have total control (although taking heed of the advice of an experienced custom home builder is definitely necessary!) in terms of the design of your new home. You can choose how big you want it to be, how many of each type of room it should have and you can design the floor plan in a way that suits your way of living.
Having said that, customs homes aren’t the best choice for everyone. So, how do you decide whether a custom home is the right option for your situation? Well, that’s what we’re going to discuss in this post.
How to Decide Whether Custom Homes Are the Right Way Forward
Investing in a property, whether that be buying a home listed on the housing market or buying a piece of land and having one constructed to your specifications, is a big deal. As you’re almost certainly aware, it probably represents the biggest financial commitment that you’ll ever make. Here are a few points to help you decide whether your interest in custom homes is worth investigating further.
- Are You Prepared to Pay More? – One of the most fundamental criteria that needs to be assessed when considering whether a custom home would be a good fit for your situation is the budget you have available. Custom homes will virtually always cost more than the typical production home or one that’s for sale on the housing market, and they are therefore not the ideal solution for anyone that has fairly strict financial constraints. Do you have the financial resources available to be able to pay all of the extra costs? Having custom blueprints drawn up can cost thousands more on its own and you also have to think about the costs relating to acquiring a suitable piece of land. Land prices can vary tremendously depending on exactly where the land is situated and how big it is. There a long list of costs attached to custom homes that’s enough to make your head spin, with land surveys to arrange, permits to obtain, the materials to buy, a general contractor to hire – and that’s just a taste of things to come. We’re not trying to scare you away from the idea of a custom home, but it’s a process that you have to go into with your eyes wide open!
- Can You Wait? – It’s not just the financial aspects that you have to consider when deciding whether a custom home is a viable option; time is a big issue too. If you go to an estate agent and purchase one of the homes they have listed for sale, you might be able to get moved into and settled in your home in a matter of just a few short weeks. It’s a very different story when investing in a custom home though, which will take at least a few months to complete and it’s not uncommon for the entire process to take as long as a year. Do your current living arrangements permit you to wait so long? Would you have somewhere to stay while your custom home was being built?
- Prepared for the Added Stress? – Searching for a new home on the housing market can be stressful too. If you’ve been looking for a long time it can start to feel like you’re never going to find a property that meets your requirements, but it’s an entirely different kind of pressure to that often experienced with custom home projects. We make no bones about it – constructing a custom home is a big challenge and it requires a lot of patience. Not only because of the length of the process, but because things can and likely will go wrong at some point. Whether it be a permit that takes longer to obtain than expected or a missing delivery of tiles for your bathrooms, these unexpected events can be testing for even the calmest of individuals.
- If You’re Sick of Looking – If you’ve viewed what seems like thousands of properties and been to dozens of showrooms for production built projects and have not even come close to seeing anything that you remotely liked, then it may be time to admit defeat and start thinking seriously about custom homes. When an individual has a very clear vision about what they want and that vision is a little different to everyone else’s, it may be near impossible to find what you’re so desperately looking for. Custom homes will allow you to stop searching and to focus on turning your ideas into a reality, first on paper and then right before your eyes on the piece of land you select.
- Do You Have Special Requirements? – Production homes are built for the average person who is likely to have fairly standard requirements. They can be customized to a certain extent, but there is a limit to what can be done with their design. If you or any of your family members have special requirements, maybe due to a disability, it can be hard to find a home that is suitable. You will likely need to have a big input during the design and construction processes, and custom homes offer you that opportunity.
Custom homes are certainly not for everyone but depending on your specific circumstances they can be a very good fit. To talk to our experienced custom home design and construction team, who have been operating in Toronto for over 15 years, contact Karen Homes today on 416-661-6006.