Building a custom home gives you the freedom of choosing all the design elements, from the floorplan to the fixtures and fittings. While a modest budget can make building your dream home slightly more challenging, it’s certainly not impossible. With a little creativity, a lot of careful planning and deciding where you’re willing to compromise and where you aren’t, you can have the home of you have always dreamed of without blowing the budget. At Metronest Homes, we are experienced and professional home builders, specialising in the construction of luxurious home designs across Melbourne’s West. We believe everyone should be able to build their dream home, so here’s a few tips to help you build if you are on smaller budget.
Find A Cheaper Block of Land
If you’re purchasing land as opposed to turnkey house and land packages, consider awkward blocks for a cost-effective option. Blocks that are smaller, odd shaped or have easement issues often come with a much more affordable price tag as many buyers shy away from them. However, these blocks are an affordable way to get your foot into your desired location and working with experienced house designers and home builders will make light work of any potential problems.
Choose Simplicity
While curves and other complex shapes may add visual interest, they also add to the price as they are difficult and time consuming to construct by your new home builder. To save costs, choose square or rectangular floor plans, and avoid any shapes that are out of the ordinary, intricate architectural details, cathedral ceilings and complicated roof-lines.
Compromise Where You Can
When planning your house design, start by deciding which features are absolute necessities and those that would be nice to have, but can wait. Spend your money on the things that aren’t easily changed such as ceiling heights, tiles and cabinetry. For fittings such as door hardware, tapware, window furnishings and light fixtures, choose the basic and most affordable versions as these can easily be changed or upgraded to more high-end versions in the future.
Don’t Change Your Mind
You have considered hundreds of home designs and found the layout that works for you, chosen your new home builder and signed the contract to start your build – now do not make any changes! One of the biggest ways to blow the budget and watch your costs soar is to make changes, even minor ones, after the contracts are signed. Take extra time to plan everything out to the final detail to ensure there’s nothing left up in the air and nothing to change your mind about.
Go Green
It’s all well and good to build a house on a budget, but it’s also smart to include features and strategies that will maximise the energy efficiency of your home all year round, saving you money in the long term. Some considerations include:
- Making the most of natural light and airflow through well a designed floor plan and window placement
- Installing energy efficient appliances and heating and cooling systems
- Choosing low energy or LED light fittings
- Using high quality insulation throughout the home
When building a new home, it’s important to keep your costs down, but remember that ultimately you have to live in the home and you want to enjoy it, be happy in it, be comfortable and have it suit your lifestyle. During the building process, watch your bottom line and stay within your budget, but don’t cut corners that will negatively impact your long-term quality of life.
If you are looking for the best home builders in Melbourne to construct your new home, contact the team at Metronest Homes today. We take pride in the quality of our workmanship and we will work collaboratively with you to deliver a home to that perfectly suits your style and budget. Call us today on 1300 510 733 or contact us online now.
