Building your own home? You have a lot of money to put out. Building costs, architectural fees, materials, permits, and other areas need to be covered. Careful planning and a bit of research can help you stay within budget and maybe even below budget. Here are some tips to help you with your building costs:

Budget for an Extra 10%

Budget carefully but budget for extra. 10% might be a good estimate. Some say less, some say more but whatever you choose to set aside for unexpected costs, don’t budget down to the penny for building your home. Make sure you’re expecting the unexpected by having extra money set aside. Otherwise you could have to put your project on hold when running out of funds or face extra penalties for paying things late.

Be Sure

Before signing contracts or paying deposits to anyone, be absolutely sure you’re ready to deal with them and that you have everything down on paper. Not only could it cost you more to make changes after the fact but it could complicate your relationship with your builder, architect, or other involved party in this process. Have you had several quotes to look over? Have you carefully considered the options for building materials in terms of pricing and in quality?

Understand Your Contract

Before you sign a contract , you’ll want to review your building contracts very carefully to differentiate actual costs from estimates and guarantees. Some homeowners who build their first home or build on their own for the first time opt for the lowest building costs but don’t look at all the fine print. Save money on building costs by knowing what each quote you receive entails.

Beware of “Freebies”

Has someone offered to do up a free house plan for you? Have they offered to upgrade you to better materials? Has a company offered some other freebie to get you to sign up with them? Beware. Figure out if there’s a “catch”.

Free house plans, for instance, sound great in theory. But if you’re getting a free plan, it’s probably not going to be owned by you. You could go through the time and trouble of customising your home only to find out that the architect’s contacts in the building industry charge more than anyone else. You can’t simply take that plan to another builder when an architect has done it up for free for you.  Building brokers may do this for a discounted fee with the hopes that you’ll work with them but would allow you to keep the copyright so that you’re free to work within the building brokers’ network of builders or go off and find quotes on your own.

Whether you’re building a single-story home, a two-story, an investment property, or something else, saving on building costs is going to be important to you. But it’s also important to execute a project with minimal stress and maximum quality. Research your options, make sure you’re in charge of your plans, get quotes from multiple sources such as quotes from building brokers and from independent builders, and do as much as you can to learn about the process before getting started.