Building a New Home Yourself vs. Hiring a Contractor
Have you just acquired a piece of land and you’re thinking of building your own house? You probably have many different questions on your mind at the moment. One such question might be who will build the house. Deciding whether you should build it yourself or hire a custom home building crew, we believe this article will help you make that decision.
You may believe that no one will be able to create your custom home idea, so you might have considered building your dream house yourself. However, building a house goes beyond translating a plan. It involves a lot of heavy lifting and administrative legwork that could turn the dream into a nightmare in minutes.
Although it has few benefits like saving costs and complete control over the project, its disadvantages far outweigh the benefits. These include; high risk of cost getting out of control, difficulties of finding the right subcontractors. This causes risk of scams and lowers bargaining power. Another downside is the fact banks may give loans on less favorable terms. Another downside is difficulty in refinancing construction loans, risk of delays, and more.
Things to Consider
Given these disadvantages, you will see that building your house yourself is usually a bad idea. However, if you still want to go ahead, consider the following before making a final decision to build your home yourself.
Size of the Project
It matters whether you are building a log cabin or a duplex as more challenges will arise the larger scale you decide to go.
Experience
How much experience you have in construction will include knowledge of quality and prices of construction materials, familiarity with local building codes, and other administrative and legal rules.
Skill
Determine the parts of the job you will be subcontracting and the parts you will do yourself.
After considering the above, you are likely to change your mind and go with a custom home building crew. This is because a custom building crew is the best choice for anyone who wants the house of his or her dreams built based on their specifications and to their taste.
Benefits of Using a Custom Home Building Crew
Complete Involvement in Decision Making
Custom home builders carry you along in every decision they make regarding construction. Your plans, designs, pictures, etc. guides their construction. This is usually based on the implementation of your wishes with expert discretion.
Multiple options
There are no restrictions when using custom builders. As long as you have the money and your demands are not contravening the building codes, they will get it done for you.
Experience
Custom builders are professionals with years of experience in construction. They have trade knowledge needed to identify what is the best quality and can also help you negotiate with subcontractors. All this will save you extra costs and ensure you get the best outcome. Years of experience have also taught them how to deal with the unexpected. So, they will likely handle such situations better than you.
Saves time and Cost
Since their work is usually contractual, they work within a time frame and finish the job within the agreed period. Delays which might be costly are avoided. They are also cheaper than general contractors.
