Assembling the Dream Team to Build Your Custom Home

July 9, 2022
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When it comes to home shopping, you’re beholden to the available inventory. And depending on your market, it could be quite difficult to find what you’re looking for. Even if you opt for compromise. Should this happen, building a custom home to your “dream” specifications may be the better choice. And if you are a buyer in a seller’s market, you no longer have to feel rushed about making an offer, worrying about being outbid, and potentially paying far more than you anticipated simply because you got in a bidding war.

With a custom home, you start with a blank slate. While exciting, you need to build a team of creators to help you turn that slate into your personal masterpiece. To help you understand the essentials when preparing for a home build, MoveMeWithCare shares the following insight.


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Preparation with flexibility

To ensure your dreams don’t become larger than your bank balance, determine exactly how much home you can afford. If you are paying with cash, you likely don’t want to exhaust all of your liquid resources, and you may be able to afford more home if you finance a portion of your build with a mortgage. If you take out a mortgage for the entire process, make sure you don’t end up being “house rich but cash poor,” a situation that can negatively affect your future quality of life and suck the joy out of living in your dream home. A consultation with your financial advisor can help you with this process if you have questions or concerns.

Connect with your core team

Make sure you have your list of desired features for both your architect and your builder. It may be helpful to divide your list into “must haves” and “nice to have” so that your team knows and considers your priorities as they work within your stated budget. You can also use this list to form your questions for the appropriate members of your home-building team.

If possible, try to visit other homes designed by your prospective architects, as well as homes built by builders on your prospect list. Not only can you see the quality of their work first-hand, but it can generate some new ideas for you, as well as give you a good visual of features in a livable environment. Having that visual reference can be very helpful, especially if you are new to home building. Building a custom home is a huge investment, so you want everything to be as perfect as humanly possible. For that reason, consider hiring a Building Information Modeling specialist, or BIM. A BIM specialist works with the other members of your team to create a 3D model of your home. It not only helps the architects, engineers, contractors, interior designers, and any others with their respective jobs – but in a collaborative platform – it also gives you a visual reference of your home features.

To find a builder, reach out to your local association of home builders for a list. Your general contractor and architect can also help you choose, or may have recommendations of their own. Having team members who have worked together before can help facilitate a smooth building process.

Your general contractor will work out a schedule with your other team members, but remember that you will all be facing external factors that you can’t control. One, in particular: the weather. Your local climate and time of year will come into play, but Mother Nature is known for breaking the rules – sometimes in epic proportions. You’ll be able to enjoy the process much more if you establish a mindset of patience and flexibility with this process!

Living the dream

Whether you build only one custom home throughout your life or several, the process gives you the opportunity to create a living space that is 100% tailor-made to your taste and lifestyle at a specific time in your life.

To make this process smoother, we also put together this list of helpful resources.

Steps to Make Your Move Easier

Get a Better Understanding of Costs

Making Wise Design Choices

Moving Tips and Advice