Start With the End in Mind
What is the long term objective for the project (Investment property or Generational Home)
When determining your budget, you need to ask yourself if this is going to be an investment property or a generational home. If it’s an investment property, then you need to understand the real estate market in the area you plan to build and then design accordingly so when you decide to sell your home, you will likely get a positive return. If it’s a generational home, then you should meet with your Financial Advisor and understand the maximum budget you can implement to achieve a timeless home for your family. (Be cautious because advisors don’t want you to cash out!) In this scenario, the real-estate market doesn’t matter because you will design and build a personalized home that complements the property and your family for many generations. Your dream home should be the fulfillment of your life efforts and a treasured heirloom for your family.
Understand your budget first
Many facets of building a home are not considered when sharing a budget but need to be considered to understand the actual cost of designing and building a home such as: land cost, architectural services, interior designer services, level of finish, contracting services, landscaping services, furniture, accessories, property taxes, insurance, utilities. All these components MUST be included in your budget. Be open and honest. A 5-million-dollar budget will become a 7-million-dollar cost in no time. If your whole budget is 7 million, then your home budget is likely 5 million.
Build the Dream Team
Assemble the Team (Builder, Architect, Interior Designer, Landscape Architect)
“We are allies not enemies.” A collaborating team makes for a better product and experience in the end.
Align your Team with your expectations
The whole team needs to understand the scale, style, finishes, and budget of your home.
Lifestyle Study
Include your whole team during the first expectations meeting. Everyone needs to know your plan and hear it first-hand. This helps to capture all the details and the different information that is specific to each member of the team. This is a meeting of the minds (include everyone). Too often, there are many professionals left out of the process and introduced at different stages of the home being designed. Each professional has a skill set and experience that the others do not have. The Builder understands construction and all costs. The Architect understands architecture and property relationships. The Interior Designer understands economy of scale, textures, layers, colors, and how the client lives in their home. And the Landscape Architect understands balancing the site while creating art and function from the exterior and the interior of the home through the view of the windows. When you leave out any one of these professionals, you lose control of aligning design and function with the budget. This is a detrimental experience for the client, and frankly, for the whole team who has the desire to assemble and add the most value to a project. Designing and building a luxury home is a passion for all of us, not a job. Failing to meet expectations because the client wasn’t informed is unfortunate and a disservice to a family wanting to design and build an amazing home. This is one of the largest investments for a family and should be one of the most exciting events during their life. It’s our responsibility to get this right for the client based on our experience and expertise. Many times, expectations are missed because the whole team wasn’t included or were included too late.
Your Process — Avoid the Spiral
There are many professionals in the building industry and clientele that can attest to the same building challenges that I am addressing. Regardless of how they were involved, each person shares a story that has similar events that take place. I will share a narrative that exposes these challenges to illustrate my point more clearly. First, I am inspired to build a home and start the process. It seems logical to hire the architect first because I want to start designing my dream home as soon as possible. I choose an architect based on the designs I see on their website or a home that I saw that they designed. We have a detailed meeting reflecting my wants and needs and start the process based on a budget I shared with them. We invest months of time and dollars into this project, and we finally come to the completion of my dream home.
It’s amazing and my excitement is growing! Next, plans are sent out to multiple builders for competitive pricing, but no selections have been made and interior design has not been started. Now I get the pricing back and it’s all over the board. Who is the most accurate and has aligned the budgets with my expectations? I will likely take the lowest cost and hire my interior designer to work with it. (First of all, the lowest proposal is likely not qualified to build the project successfully. Secondly, this puts the interior designer in a bad position and restricts their creativity because the budgets for all the selections are not realistic or worse yet, won’t align with expectations). This is supposed to be my dream home! I am so stressed, and we haven’t even started construction! Now after 8 to 12 months of designing and pricing my dream home, I am way over budget, and I haven’t even put furniture in the home or landscaped the home. Long story short, starting over is a waste of time and money, so invest in the process upfront.
Can you start to see what happens and the downward spiral by not having all the information and your team assembled in the very beginning?
