Preliminary Home Design Budget Problems

You've just bought the dream lot and now it's time to build your dream home, but you don't know where to start. Maybe you've started to design your home, but don't know if you have a good design or one that's functional and will meet your needs.

One of the biggest problems when building your new home is going to be money or finances. If you have $200,000 to build a home, try to design one that won't cost more than $150,000. Most people have $200,000 and design a home that will cost $300,000 to build.

Try to give your self a 15 to 40% financial construction cushion that you can use for changes or problems as they arise during the construction process. I started a job once with a $400,000 budget and by the time the job was done, the homeowners had spent over $625,000. That hurts.

I was only assisting the main contractor on the job and he didn't seem to mind and neither did the homeowners, until the job was finally $100,000 over budget. By this time it was too late and they were scrambling for finance.

Don't let this happen to you when building your new home. Preliminary home designing and planning is extremely important. This is where you can stop the money train and get your home built within budget. If you're working with architects, designers or contractors that give you vague ideas, you should find someone that can give you some hard figures.

Explained to them, that you're not interested in rough numbers, you need an exact price before the job starts. If you're not interested in losing sleep, worrying about your home and a home builder, pay close attention to what I just said.