How much does it cost to love your home?

As you may have noticed, many of the homes you see today are quite similar. When entering certain neighbourhoods, there could be 2-3 designs with slight differences, such as different paint colour or material. The reason for this in the past was that many of the homes were built at the same time, in order to cut cost, and lower prices for the end user. Unfortunately, that is not the reality. This cut costs, but that is not reflected to the final user, because there is a pricing model in any municipality for what the customer is willing to pay for this development, and the rest is taken as profit for the developer. With that in mind, if the houses that were built many years ago are being restored or a new home is being built, how much would it be to hire an architect to design your new home?

That actually is not the question that many people would begin with. Instead, the question is how much is this entire building going to cost?

Fair enough.

The cost of a final project is a touchy subject for both architects and builders. Because it depends on so many different factors.

• Where is the project?
• How big is the project?
• How nice are we talking?
• What kind of windows?
• And many many more.

Questions that any homeowner should be asking when they first start thinking about building a home. But who are you asking these questions to? Builders will be able to answer many of these topics, they are experienced and have incredible insight regarding the cost of building a project. But what often happens during these conversations, is that the builder will either go in detail regarding cost, or will present the affordable option of a design that has already been built, that they could build again, we will call this a “Model Home.” The Model Home has an attractive price because it uses existing partnerships, economies of scale, and pre-arranged operations to achieve this build. So, if you select the Model Home, you now have your price. You have saved time on planning, design costs, and materials.

Fast forward to pre-construction, you are beginning to imagine yourself in your new home. You realize that there are some minor changes you would like to make to the Model Home design, to ensure your new home reflects your needs. The issue is that a Model home’s price depends heavily on the fact that not many elements can change, it’s like buying a short sleeve shirt and going back the next day and asking for the sleeves to be longer, but they do not have any long sleeve shirts, and now you are forced to go to the tailor, and are being charged 3 times the price of the original shirt, when you could have bought the shirt you needed for 10% more when you were originally shopping. Now you have an important decision to make, and many people have been in this exact scenario. Do I just accept the Model Home design and make it work? For many, the answer is yes. They build the home based on the Model Home’s specifications, its built at the price they were promised, and their house is fine.

There’s an alternative to building a home that is “fine.”

The problem is not that you want to make changes to your design, this is an incredibly important decision in your life, and you should feel empowered to make decisions regarding your home. Understanding the objectives of your home is the job of a designer, but recommending you ways of achieving this is the job of a great designer. Therefore, in order to decide on who you should be speaking with regarding these questions, you need references, and you need to come prepared with some important answers. Today, you can start by answering the following questions:

• Where am I building (Address)
• What kind of home am I building?
• How many square feet will it be?
• What is your budget range to do this?
• What is your experience / How involved would you like to be?

However, the problem with trying to figure out an entire dream based on 5 questions is that a lot of these questions are answered with..

“It depends.”

Because each question impacts the other. For example, you could build in a certain place because its cheaper, then decide to change locations, and realize the place now needs to be smaller to fit your budget. A lot can change. What we are recommending is visibility on what certain options are, so that people can help educate themselves on the trade offs before the project has already begun. This makes the planning phase a lot more valuable because you can start making decisions that are aligned with your overall goals for the project, before speaking with any experts.

If you are interested in how we are doing this, follow along.