Building a new home can be an expensive undertaking. There's a lot that you can do to bring down the cost of new home construction, and it doesn't necessarily have to involve sourcing for used building materials.
Discussed below are three practical strategies that you should adopt in a bid to lower your construction costs.
Mind The Weather
Prevailing weather conditions can have a significant impact on the cost of new home construction. Specifically, harsh weather (e.g. heavy rains and snow) could inflate your construction budget by a huge margin. Construction-related activities often grind to a halt due to harsh weather. This easily results in construction delays that are both inconvenient and expensive.
These delays could be expensive in the sense that new home builders (and their sub-contractors) often charge according to the number of man-hours spent on each project. If you got a construction loan for the new home, interest continues to accrue during these delays.
As if this is not enough, building materials that may have been delivered on site might suffer serious damage upon exposure to the harsh weather conditions. You might be forced to replace damaged materials, which adds to your expenses.
Make sure to plan the construction during times of the year where the weather is more likely to be temperate.
Cut The Corners
Your chosen house design will have a significant impact on the cost of bringing up the actual structure. The less complex the design, the more affordable the cost of construction. Limiting the number of corners on exterior walls (and around the entire house design) is one of the best ways to achieve a simpler house design. Each 'unnecessary' corner will increase the workload for the home builder and his or her sub-contractors. In addition to this, the quantity of building materials required increases as the number of corners around the house increases. Before construction begins, review the house design with your architect and ask if the design can have fewer corners on exterior walls than it has already.
Avoid Late Amendments
Before the foundation for your house is laid, ensure that you've reviewed every aspect of its design and that you're satisfied that that's what you want.
Making changes (late amendments) to the design once construction has begun is almost always likely to cost you a significant sum. Late amendments might require the builder to seek approval and additional permits from the local building authority. Your architect and site engineer might have to go back to the drawing board in order to accommodate the desired changes. In a nutshell, late amendments are expensive and should be avoided.
Share