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How can you be sure you can trust your builder?
When you’re starting the process of building a new home, a lot of promises can be thrown around, and it’s not always easy to tell if you can trust what your builder is promising you. Unfortunately, not all builders are trustworthy, so it’s essential to do your due diligence and ensure you’re choosing the right builder to build your new home.
When building a new home, you’re putting a lot of responsibility in the hands of the builder you choose. So, you need to be sure the builder you end up choosing is true to their word when it comes to the price on your contract and the inclusions and timeframe for your new home. And, of course, that the builder isn’t going to go bust during the construction of your home.
The problem is, average builders are out there over-promising and under-delivering. They make their quotes as cheap as possible, hoping that’s what will win them the job.
But the truth is, they haven’t costed the project correctly and they’ve completely missed key elements for your new home. On the other hand, professional builders know what their clients want.
So they deliver a base product that will meet your expectations. They’re upfront about the cost of your new home so you can trust that the price on your quote will be the price you pay.
Ask Questions To Get The Full Story
Here are a few questions you can ask to ensure you’re choosing a builder you can trust.
“What’s not included in my contract?”
This might seem counterintuitive because obviously, you want to know what will be included in your new home. However, asking this question, rather than ‘what will be included’, opens up the opportunity to find things that your builder hasn’t included in your contract that should be. Think of it as a decoy.
Just about every builder will exclude landscaping or driveways in a building contract, so if your builder says “everything is included!”, then you should be concerned. This is a sales tactic, lulling you into a false sense of security that the entire process of bringing your new home to life is taken care of.
Every builder should tell you that landscaping and driveways aren’t included, so this opens up the conversation for you to ask, “okay, so what else isn’t included?”. Professional builders know what their clients want.
Don’t Be Stung By Additional Charges
Their contract inclusions cover the small details, like ducted air conditioning and stone benchtops, as standard so you can be sure you’re getting what you want from your new home. They’ll be able to show you each specific inclusion on your contract so there’s no confusion on whether something is included or not.
Whereas average builders will have missed a lot of specific details. So it’s important to ask questions so that you’re clear about what’s included before you sign the contract. Otherwise, you’ll be stung by additional charges later down the track.
Next, ask your builder “What’s your guaranteed timeframe for my new home to be completed?”. Professional builders will be able to give a typical timeframe from concept to completion based on experience with previous clients. Then, based on the design of your new home, they’ll be able to give you a timeframe for construction.
Professional Builders Review Their Numbers
The important thing here is to also ensure you also get a guaranteed start date. An average builder might tell you it will take 5 months to build your home, but not provide you with a start date so you don’t really know when your new home will be completed.
Armed with these timeframes, you’ll have a clear idea of exactly how long it’s going to take to design, build and move into your new home. Finally, you need to ask your builder what their processes are for ensuring their company remains solvent in the year ahead.
The unfortunate reality is that 80% of builders never do any financial planning or costing reviews. But, professional builders have set business planning sessions and are constantly reviewing their numbers. Without this, it’s impossible for a builder to keep their head above water. Builders who don’t monitor their numbers are just a giant Ponzi scheme.
It doesn’t matter if you are building your first home or if you have built many times before…
Designing a new home can be very overwhelming and when you hear new things for the first time, it's not easy to remember everything. So that’s why we’ve put together a quick guide for The 7 Things You Must Know Before Designing A New Home.
It’s completely free, and it will help you to keep your design on budget and avoid any nasty surprises that can sneak up on you when building a custom home.
Click on the link below to download 7 Things You Must Know BEFORE Designing A New Home.
