Are you considering custom home design?
Are you looking to work with a designer/architect to design and draw your custom home plans?
Are you considering purchasing a plan from one of the many house plan websites?
Wait!
Consider working with a builder to design and draw your plans!
When you work with architects, designers or even purchase a plan from a website you are getting a very nice house that looks great, on paper and in a photo rendering.
Many times the plan looks great, the pictures of the home are beautiful, but the cost to build that home is very high and here are just a few of those reasons!
- The house is designed to look great, but the cost to build has not been considered.
- The plans are close, but not complete and a builder will need to redraw to build from the plans.
- The plans are overly detailed and included products that manufacturers lobby architects to include; in some cases architects get paid for including certain products and designs.
- There are things on the plan that are “cool” but impractical and the cost to build is not taken into consideration.
- The plan is drawn for a different state than the state you plan to build the home and as a result is missing required details.
- Working with an architect can costs thousands of dollars. We have seen plans that cost clients greater $10,000 for a 2,500 square foot home that are overdrawn, but still missing important information for the builder.
We like to refer to an old fishing statement;
“Fish do not buy fishing lures fishermen do so, lures only have to catch fishermen.”
This is very similar to buying plans. They are meant to catch the perspective owners eye, but the cost to build that design is not taken into consideration and in many cases major modifications are made to the plan to bring down the cost. In some cases the client has to pay the builder to redraw the plans.