I think we’re all guilty of avoiding the elephant in the room, sometimes, when it comes to building. That elephant’s name is Budget. When you’re about to design your future house, your budget seriously needs to be assessed and considered in every aspect of your drawings.
Let’s use an imaginary scenario as an example. You and your partner buy a lot in the city for 300k. There’s a 50’s bungalow on it that you want to tear down and build an infill on. So, right off the bat, you’re in on the project for 300k plus demolition, lets say that came to 15k. You go to the bank to pre qualify for a mortgage to see where you’re sitting financially. The bank comes back and says, we’ll let you borrow 700k on top of what you have invested on the lot. Let’s say you have 240k owing on the lot, plus 15k in demo, your at 255k. The bank has given you a 700k construction budget, minus 15k, that brings you down to a construction budget of 685k.
It’s at this point where you truly need to make a wise decision on who you decide to work with. If you break your budget down to a square footage price, punch in 685k and divide that by your square footage. Let’s say you need an 1800 SF house, that breaks down to $380 per square foot for construction and design. That is a healthy budget for an 1800 SF house. You could afford to hire a professional design firm and builder to build your house, garage and landscape the property with that kind of budget.
Here’s where things can take a quick turn though. First and foremost, you need to hire a team that you can trust with the experience and skill to get it all done. I’m talking about your design and build team. If you miss that step, you’re setting yourself up for failure straight away. Okay, now that we’ve addressed that, if you go and add marble walls, marble floors and stone tile your entire house, that budgets blown. If you decide that you want a garden suite, your budgets blown. If you decide that you want a secondary suite, in the basement, you’re pushing that budget pretty tight. Square footage is also a huge factor in your budget. Think of all of the trades involved in a typical build, all of their pricing revolves around labor and materials.
Exterior design… here’s where things can also get out of hand. Your designer should be mindful of your budget and a wise decision is to spend a little more on your building envelope and the front of your house. If we’re designing an infill with this kind of budget, we would most likely keep the roof design fairly conventional and build off of the front facade to create a compelling front elevation. Premium exterior finishes and cladding on the front and perhaps some accents on the rear elevation. Vinyl siding, although typically frowned upon in the custom world, is not a bad product if you’re using good quality siding. The entry level stuff, you can shoot a hockey puck at and it will shatter like glass. We would also design the basement at 9 feet minimum, main floor at 10 feet and the second floor at 8 feet and perhaps add in a vaulted ceiling, where it makes sense.
Your budget determines what you can design and build, it’s as simple as that. We strongly advise clients to do their homework beforehand, and we don’t mean, skimming through and making calls. We mean, sitting down with a team of professionals and talking about what is realistic within your means. We’ve seen scenarios where clients will lead the design and let it get completely out of hand. Then when a reputable builder prices it out, the clients realize they’re in over there heads and now have to pay the designers again to make changes in order to make it affordable. If you’re talking to a reputable design firm and they ask you, “What’s your construction budget?” that’s a good sign. We don’t ask that to gauge how much we should charge you, we ask that because it’s part of our responsibility to keep the project realistic. Design is truly amazing because you can make a decision on the drawings that can cost an additional 20k… in less than 2 minutes. That’s 10k a minute, pretty expensive oversite eh? That’s why it’s crucial to have the right design and build team behind you when you’re planning your custom home.
Having said all of that, let’s address that elephant in the room and get comfortable with it. You’re better off truly getting that out of the way, in the beginning, rather than slipping in elephant poo, later on!