Creating Your Forever Home: Ten Reasons You Should Build Your Own Hous
At some point or another, everyone imagines what it would be like to build their dream home, and if you’re at the point in your life where you have the means to make that dream a reality, congratulations! There are few pursuits as rewarding as creating your forever home, and you’ll be in for an exciting journey.
That said, it’s a pretty daunting prospect, and you may be wondering whether it’s worth it. This article is here to help you out with ten reasons you should take the plunge!
1. The Opportunity for Completely Customized Living
Most pre-built homes are chosen partly based on new owners being able to put their own stamp on things – but nothing compares to building the property from scratch.
From the overall layout to the most minor materials, you’re in control of absolutely everything when you go for a custom build, with the ability to design something that fits your goals and lifestyle like a lock in a keyhole.
2. You’ll Never Run Out of Space
When you design the layout of your new home, your custom home builder can help you optimize space and plan ahead. If you’re planning on having a family, for example, you can factor this into the build by adding extra bedrooms, and you’re also able to design each room to be as flexible as possible should you change your mind about its use a few years in.
You have a huge degree of freedom, meaning that once your house is built, you should never need to worry about running out of room because you’ve already accounted for that.
3. Energy Efficiency and Eco-Friendly Living
It’s only now that homes being built place priority on energy efficiency and sustainability, so if you buy an older property, you’ll likely have to deal with adapting it to be better in this regard.
If you’re building your own home, though, you can embed these key features from the start. From solar panels to smart heating systems, there’s a wealth of new technology that you can factor in that will not only save you money in the long run but also reduce your impact on the planet.
4. Higher Quality Building Materials
When an estate or block is being built, builders have to think about many different homes at once. This means that time and cost have to be carefully balanced, and the result is that compromises in building quality sometimes need to be made.
When all your builders have to think about is the one home, this isn’t an issue. Following advice from your architects, you can specify the materials you want to use, so you shouldn’t have to worry about something breaking six months in.
5. Designed to Fit Your Budget Perfectly
Budget is a key consideration when it comes to a new home, and because you have total control over every element of the building process, a custom build can end up being better value when compared to another property of a similar caliber.
You don’t have to pay for anything you don’t want and can instead prioritize what truly matters to you.
6. The Ability to Choose Your Ideal Location
It’s an age-old problem: you find the perfect home, but it isn’t in a great location, or you find a location that fits your life perfectly, but there isn’t a property there you like.
Building your home from scratch circumvents this issue completely. While you’ll still have a few inevitable challenges, such as securing the land, custom building allows you to both design the perfect home and choose the most ideal location possible.
7. Health and Safety Benefits
Both new builds and older properties have their strengths and weaknesses, but if you’re looking for space, older buildings are usually more appropriate. The downside is that there are sometimes greater health and safety concerns: older buildings were not built to the same rigorous safety standards as modern houses are and can contain hazardous materials like lead paint (and potentially deadly ones like asbestos). For the benefit of more space, new buyers may be met with further work to remedy these issues.
With a custom build, you get the best of both worlds – modern design and standards with as much space as you can budget for.
8. The Capacity to Future-Proof
When you buy a pre-built property, you’re mostly at the mercy of the building styles of the time or whatever alterations the previous owners have made. Pre-built homes, as well as any renovations previously undertaken, typically haven’t been future-proofed; they’re built to fit a set specification, and modifications are undertaken for a specific purpose.
When you build your own property, you can anticipate changes in your life and build them into the property. For example, you can make sure all the children’s bedrooms are sufficiently sized to accommodate their needs through to adulthood, and account for aspects like having to care for an aging parent later on down the line.
9. The Opportunity to Integrate Modern Technology
The introduction of smart technology in the home over the last decade has revolutionized the way we live, but again, most homes haven’t been built with these advancements in mind. If you introduce smart tech into your home, you modify things to work as best as they can, but it’s never usually perfect.
In a custom build, you can prioritize these features from the start, such as installing automated lighting systems into the architecture of the building, rather than having to opt for make-shift solutions.
10. Obtaining the Ultimate Satisfaction
There’s truly nothing like the feeling of stepping through the doors of your newly built home for the first time and experiencing the months of planning and preparations pay off. Coming home after a hard day’s work to what is, quite literally, your dream home makes your day-to-day worth it, and the long-term security it affords is the ultimate reward.
It’ll be a lot of work, but once you’re in, you won’t change it for the world.