10 things to remember when Building a New Home

Most people building their new home don’t realise there’s more to think about than just the design and colour scheme. After all, building a new home is a huge investment—one that you want to get the best value from, ensuring it’s finished when planned, within the budget you have available, and looking the way you imagined.

Here’s 10 things to know before building a new home:

1. Budget

   Do you have a budget set aside for emergency variations during the build? It’s recommended to have 5-10% of your build budget set aside for variations.

2. Authority Works

   Have service connections like electricity, water, internet, etc., been planned? Double-check who is responsible for each service.

3. Quality of Work

   Have you checked in your contract how the quality of work will be handled? Will you be able to inspect the build’s progress regularly, and what happens when you notice something that needs to be fixed?

4. Insurance

   Do you know what insurance certificates to ask for to protect your investment? Make sure you obtain certificates of insurance before paying the deposit.

5. Finance Approval

   Is your contract conditional on securing finance? It’s important to have a Plan B in case securing finance doesn’t go as planned.

6. Essential Information

   In Australian building contracts, there are documents that you need to provide to your builder before any building works can start. Have you checked what these documents are, and can they be provided in time for works to start when planned?

7. Budget Tracking

   Have you set up a system to capture costs as they arise? Keeping track of expenditure against budgets like provisional sums and prime costs will help avoid becoming overwhelmed during your build.

8. Special Conditions

   These are changes that your builder makes to the standard contract, usually to learn from mistakes that cost them on previous projects. It’s important to have these reviewed to ensure they don’t undermine provisions within the General Conditions.

9. Be Ready for Extensions

   Unfortunately, delays happen on over half of all new home building projects. However, if you’re prepared and have a plan in place from the start, they can be easily managed. Make sure you know the steps your contract outlines for managing extensions to the building period, and check that you’ve nominated a weekly rate that your builder will pay back to you for delays.

10. Be Ready for the Highs and Lows

    Remember to smell the roses and enjoy the progress! Building a new home is such an achievement, and although some periods of the build might be harder than others, it’ll all be worth it in the end.

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I hope these tips help you on your new home-building journey.

Remember to build a team around you that can help you pull this all together and achieve the best outcome on your build.

Thanks for reading and catch you on my next post :)

Annelyse

Construction Management | M. Construction Law

If you're enjoying this then don't forget to follow me @buildwithannelyse for my daily tips on building and renovation contracts.

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