What Your New Home Builder Wishes You Would Ask Before Work Begins

When working with a new home builder, no doubt you have many questions about the build process and the selection of homes that are available. Your builder may be happy to answer all those questions for you, but there may be some questions that they want you to ask that you might not have thought of. Note a few of those here and why they can be important to discuss with your home builder.

Ask about personalizing your home or making any changes.

The process of building a home is often more complicated than homebuyers realize, and you can actually create quite a bit of work for your home builder if you make any change to their plan, even if the change seems somewhat minor. For example, you may decide that you want a different type of cabinetry in the kitchen; you might assume it's simply a matter of changing your order, but your home builder may then need to work with an entirely different cabinetmaker or vendor, and your new choice may take weeks to arrive. In turn, other parts of the build process may get delayed or need to be reworked as they can't put in flooring or benchtops until the cabinets are in, and so on.

This is why it's vital that you talk about what personalizing you might want done to your home and ask about all your options before work begins, rather than assuming you can keep changing your mind during the build process. While changes can often be accommodated, they usually mean delays and added costs.

Ask when it's good to visit the build site.

Even though it's your property and your new home, you may not actually be welcome on the build site as often as you'd like to stop by. For the sake of safety, all work might need to stop if you want to actually step onto the lot and especially if you want to tour the unfinished home. This can lead to long delays in construction. Remember that some subcontractors may not be available indefinitely, and too many delays might mean having to find new subcontractors for certain jobs.

If you would like to tour your home as it's being built, ask when it's good to visit and inspect the work so your builder can note certain dates. This is more convenient for them and can also mean actually seeing finished stages of construction so you can get a picture of how your home is coming together.


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