We have been excited to see a trend of consumers moving towards more personalised architectural designed homes and renovation over recent years, resulting in interesting streetscapes and less face brick Pizza Hut houses (or so we call them). We have also been hearing and seeing the downside of this, where excited consumers go to an Architect first, design a house or extension that they fall in love with but have no idea whether they can afford to make the concepts a reality.
We are hearing that people are going so far as to pay close to $30,000 for plans and engineering before realising their dream house is just not a reality and then considering that their only option contracts with a big McMansion, cookie cutter builder. The majority of concepts plans prepared by architects are never built …. So what comes first, the chicken or the egg?
We consider that building a personalised individual home or renovation should be available to everyone. We recommend, however, that you have your builder involved in the whole design process from the concept stage. At the concept stage, it is still possible to make changes to the design to keep the build within your overall budget and maintain the appearance you want to achieve. Sometimes, it is as simple as resizing the project or changing the sizes of windows to keep them within the standardised range for suppliers, that may result in significant savings but achieve a similar appearance.
It is also important that you have done your research and really thought about what inclusions are important to you. Will you really use the Juliette balcony over the patio? Do you need the 6th bedroom? Do you need a dog bath in the laundry?
We have designers and architects that we work with to simplify this process that suits all budgets. Everyone deserves the home they have dreamed of…
Contact Luke today to discuss your dream home.
