Nothing makes a statement of a successful career like building a luxury home. As this may be one of life’s crowning achievements, building a luxury home is a serious business. The process dictates the selection of a seasoned luxury home builder.
With this in mind, this task commences with selecting a like-minded custom home builder. Aligning your interest with a selected builder will provide you with the trusted adviser and guidance you will need during the entire design and construction process.
So, what are your design goals for building a luxury home?
Do you understand the lifestyle your new custom house will reflect?
These a just a few of the early questions that you will need to be prepared to answer when you get started.
Building a luxury home can be a daunting task and certainly a complicated one unless, of course, you take the help of highly skilled and experienced custom home builders.
So, instead of accepting the floor plan of an existing house and building it accordingly, why not work with a custom home design that is suitable to your needs?
Create a welcoming space for you and your family by arranging the features you want to have.
Personalizing your new house is what the luxury house design process is all about. Selecting the cabinetry and appliances is just the beginning. Developing a special family media room or designing a gourmet kitchen is where the fun really begins.
Read the blog to know more about building your custom house. Additionally, you may read our in-depth resource to plan for a luxury home design.
Guide to Understand What You Should Know About Building a Luxury Home
Checklist for Building a Luxury Home
Getting started with building a luxury home means planning for a lot of things. Let us discuss the checklist and know how to go about it.
Creating a budget
Every house irrespective of its size costs substantial sums of money. So, you should be clear about the construction budget to determine the size of your house and the features to be added.
Remember, building a custom home can cost anywhere between $250 to $400 per square foot. So, while deciding the budget, the things to consider may include the land cost, local taxes, design fees, the cost of construction, the cost of landscaping, the interior designing cost, and the money to be set aside to meet any contingency.
More often than not it is not feasible to cough up the entire money for building a luxury home project. You need to take recourse to a loan.
And in order to qualify for a loan, you need to follow a series of steps; checking your credit report and correcting any errors therein, speaking with multiple lenders to get the best rate, considering the mortgage options, terms, type of loan (fixed or variable), jumbo or traditional, and the amount of down payment to be made.
It is advisable to consult your family and/or financial advisor before taking the plunge. You may read our blog to know what it takes to work with a custom home builder.
Time to complete
It is entirely realistic to set a fixed timeframe to complete the new house construction. Find out the factors that you want to take into account before determining the final timeline.
Do you have a house to sell?
Can you lease a home after you sell your home?
Discuss the timeline with your contractor to know whether he can finish the job within the time frame you are planning.
Selecting the location
Selecting the house building site is arguably the most important factor in designing a custom house. How to sculpt the proper landscape for your house shall depend on the factors such as the orientation of the property, the availability of sun, the topography, or the presence of any natural features (forest, water, field, etc).
The other equally important criteria to consider are the size of the lot, the slope of the land, the closeness of the neighbors’ properties, the style of other houses (sometimes important from the building code perspective), and the access to resources (cable, power, phone, water source, etc), among others.
Consult a professional such as an architect or contractor to know the pros and cons of building the house for a specific site. He or she can guide you in understanding whether the site can accommodate your luxury home design or build aspects.
Better to do a site analysis with a professional before buying the lot. Get information on the deed restrictions, energy codes, flood zones, utility connections, etc.
This is important as zoning can impact the height of the house, the setback distance from the street, or whether you can build an alternative structure on the lot such as a pool house or additional garages.
Does the land belong to a historic district?
If yes, there may be additional requirements to make regarding the look of your house or the materials needed to build. Find out the house values in the neighborhood.
You certainly would want to carefully analyze the area before building a multi-million-dollar house in a transitional area. Talk to the neighbors to know if your family can fit into the surroundings.
Designing the custom house
Then comes developing the luxury home design of an architectural program comprising a statement of goals for your custom house. Keep the following in mind; think big and then scale back to build something unique.
Start with a big idea and then go about adjusting it to the constraints of budget, timeframe, zoning, location, and others.
When working with your custom home designer you want to keep a few things in mind. Be firm on your priorities and differentiate between ‘needs’, ‘dreams’, or ‘absolute no’s’’. Prioritize features in order of importance. Keep choices to fall back on if certain decisions of yours do not make the light of day.
Point out things that you don’t want under any circumstances, for these can help the architect to design. Share the architectural program comprising the luxury home design with the designer or architect to know what can be incorporated.
Determining the size of your house
Building a luxury home design begins with understanding the size of your living space. The second question you will need to answer do you want a one-story or a two-story house and how this work with the home site you selected.
The amount of space is determined by a number of factors such as the height limitations or square footage due to deed restrictions etc., the number of stories, the requirement of stairs, the size of rooms (number of bedrooms and bathrooms, etc), and the types of rooms (home office, media room, playroom, gym, garage, mudroom, basement or attic, etc.)
Incorporating your lifestyle
Building a custom house means making it your way. For instance, if you are a musician then have a soundproof studio, if an avid biker, then a place to park your bike, or if an artist then a space to display art, among others. In short, incorporate your lifestyle into the design of your house.
Arranging the floor plan
Once you are clear about the number of rooms and the total living area of your custom house, you can think of arranging everything. Think of the way of arranging the rooms as it can affect privacy, traffic flow, and interaction between the guests and your family members.
Determine if you want separate spaces or an open interior layout, separate private and public spaces, the things to include in the basement, first floor, second floor, and higher (for a multi-storied home), the number of entrances, or whether the indoor and outdoor spaces should flow into each other or remain separate, etc.
Besides, you can think of the room arrangement – whether the children’s playroom should be near the kitchen, the master suite bedroom to be separate from other bedrooms, or the home office or artist studio to be built in a quiet corner.
Green design
Going green has become a new functional method of living today given the greater awareness among people to reduce the carbon footprint. Building a luxury home is a perfect opportunity to incorporate the best in energy-efficient technology.
You may go for a luxury house design that emphasizes on energy efficiency, conserving water, and reducing utility bills, among others. You may talk to the architect to know more about incorporating green features in your custom house.
Hiring a custom builder
It is better to hire a luxury home builder before finalizing your luxury home design. It is the custom builder who will ultimately be responsible for transforming your vision or the architect’s design plan into reality.
So, this person should have the experience and expertise to understand the features you want to incorporate or the vision you want to achieve. Take recommendations from your family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors and zero into 2 – 3 contractors.
You can even go online to find out about them and their quality of work through ratings and reviews. As for the referrals from the select few custom builders, talk to their clients and know how they fared in their opinion as professionals.
Find out if the custom builder has the requisite licenses and understanding of the building laws and other zoning regulations. Learn if the custom builder has the workman’s compensation insurance and general liability. You may view our video to get tips for hiring a general contractor to build your custom house.
Conclusion
Once the above-mentioned processes are complete, you can seek bids from the shortlisted custom home builders and select the one who has quoted a fair price as well as possesses the capability of completing the project within the timeframe.
From the custom house designer capturing your ideas and developing them into a luxury home design, the custom builder will ultimately transform those home plans into building the custom house of your dreams.
In the end, quality should always be given preference even if that comes at a slightly higher price. You may read a blog to know how to go about designing and building a luxury home for your family.
