Navigating the Custom Home or Self-Build Roadmap
- Team KC
- Jun 30, 2024
- 6 min read
Having worked in the Self-Build and Custom Home industries across the United Kingdom, North America and Australia our experience has led us to believe the consumer in nearly all cases enters the new homebuilding journey with little to no understanding of the processes, challenges, and risks they`ll need to prepare for to deliver a successful outcome.
Our experience suggests only 1 in 100 understand the challenging journey that lies ahead, usually, industry experienced people, like builders or property investors with several projects under their belts, and yet this 1% still lacks the appropriate technology to navigate the new custom home building journey beyond their trusted network of professionals.
Simply put, the new custom home building industry is a varied landscape thwart with inconsistencies that even the qualified professionals can find challenging, so how does the inexperienced consumer successfully navigate the new custom home or self-build journey?
To name a few, the consumer will at some stage need to navigate the below challenges:
Land Acquisition & Planning: Identifying a plot of land that is free of hidden expenses and one that aligns with the consumers bespoke home aspirations.
Budgeting: Developing a realistic budget and possessing an understanding of what the budget will deliver.
Pre-Approved Finance: Obtaining a qualified understanding of what the total budget parameters are prior to undertaking the journey.
Custom Home Design: Identifying and partnering with the best architect to is critically important. Capturing the dream, converting the budget, design requirements, preferred construction methods, materials, and must-have features into a functional custom home design. The cornerstone of the custom home journey, the Architectural partner can make or break the journey at various levels through poorly conveying the dream design, misaligning the design budget, and delivering a non-functional design. The problem is, not all architects/designers are created equal and some are specialised experts in limited, or certain architectural design subsets. Consumers need to be diligent in the selection process and have an appreciation for fees associated with the aspired design intent. Often a higher design fee is overlooked in the beginning only to cost the customer 10 times more at the end of the journey.
Construction Methods, Materials & Operational Considerations: Traditional methods of construction in most cases are no longer adequate or suitable considering the monumental increase in natural disasters and our dire need as a collective to build efficient net-zero buildings. Addressing the climate impact of new buildings can easily be achieved through aligning climate-ready design techniques and improved methods of construction which are now readily available. However, for the consumer, the path to "building better" often never materializes as they are exposed to lazy professionals / contractors who care less about the environment, the consumer and focus solely on below standard building ideals that only promote short-term advantages simply to secure a contract. It is well-known that people want to build better but these common industry pain points often erode the consumers good intentions to build climate-ready and optimized homes.
Custom Home Builder: Custom homebuilders and contractors are everywhere. Like the architect/designer, the problem is that not all homebuilders are created equal. Some might talk a good talk, but will they actually follow through? Ask any farmer what a bushel of wheat costs and he will have an instant answer for you. Similarly, the price of oil and an ounce of gold is common knowledge, with costs quoted down to the last cent. But try asking a home builder about the "cost per square meter" to build a home, and you'll likely get any number of responses, including lowball guesses, confusing vague price ranges, or even outright irritation from the respondent.
Unconditional Finance: A lot of homeowners try to arrange their own loans – and then get stuck. Unless the builder is offering finance, this is a stage where the builder is reliant on the customer getting the job done. For the customer, it`s all about getting the best deal by leveraging pre-approval and project documents.
Decision Fatigue: Decision fatigue is a challenge that nobody talks about. Every little detail must be worked through, considered, debated, and selected. From the type of insulation used in the attic to the height of hanging light fixtures to the size and colour of the kitchen backsplash grout – the choices are endless. You will make hundreds – if not thousands – of small choices throughout the process. And if you are not careful, decision fatigue will hit you in the head like a wayward brick!
Like-for-Like Tendering: Unless you`re a experienced professional, or have engaged a Quantity Surveyor the process of establishing a true like-for-like tendering field will be extremely challenging. LfL tendering is a crucial component in determining the best value quotes, free of hidden exclusions and inferior solutions are obtained.
Its fair to say, to successfully navigate these challenges and deliver the DREAM home within a reasonable timeframe and to budget is a tough ask. For most, it’s a deterrent, and others it’s like rolling a dice putting faith in a system they have no experience in, and placing their life savings and future planning in the hands of someone they have just met is often an unavoidable risk.
However, its not just the consumer who is at risk, in fact an un-organised consumer exposes professionals to a multitude of negative scenarios and of all the professionals, the building contractor is the most exposed during the tendering phases especially when the consumer is poorly equipped (drawings / specification / misaligned budgets) all of which can be very costly from a resource standpoint.
Unrealistic, non-transparent consumers easily burn resources and time which can be disastrous. Part of the process some might say, unfortunately, yes! The most experienced contractors know how to quickly identify qualified customers, but this is only one of the challenges for the contractor (and the customer) if tendering is undertaken with poorly planned house drawings, specifications and tendering packages because this in many cases, forces tendering to assume meter rates and there is simply no agreed-upon standard for what constitutes a square meter rate and thus the "like-for-like" tendering criteria is broken.
No grocer would have trouble telling you what a litre of milk costs, and what it contains. It is not so easy, however, to decide what is contained in a square meter of a bespoke home. For example, do building contractors only include finished square meterage in their estimates? Do they count unfinished attics? Does a square meter include the garage and outdoor deck? Therein lies the exposure complication: it's up to each building contractor to decide for themselves relying on the customer to ask the right questions, decipher and make the best value decision.
In the consumer led, custom home or self-build landscape, these scenarios play out in real life all the time. Each building contracting applies their own tendering formula. Unfortunately, it often results in a consumer selecting a builder based on who was the best “sales” person and who can provide the “lowest cost per meter” without considering the total picture.
However, each building contractor, when presented with detailed plans, specifications and tendering packages is able to implement unit costing and vendor quotes to arrive at a total true construction cost. At the end of the day, the square-meter cost is largely incidental but is often always used as the primary consideration during the consumers preliminary selection process.
Kustomer Connect creates a systematic and predictable commercial landscape that reverses this risk statement, eliminates the variables, and empowers novice consumer so that they can confidently commence construction knowing they have expertly completed the pre-construction phases, selected the best value solutions and partners, and exactly what their house will cost without the surprise factor.
Improved methods of construction and optimized operating systems exist and the changes we need to make are simple, practical, and often cost no more than current unsustainable building practices. Solving this challenge is best tackled at the point of design and carried through the entire pre-construction process - Kustomer Connect systematically nails this and in a language and format suited to the consumer.
Get in touch with the expert Kustomer Connect team today to register your interest and tell us your story. We`re currently forming a focus group of consumer seeking to build a new custom home or self-build project and would love to hear from you.
Additionally, we`re also forming a focus group of professionals like architects and contractors seeking to improve the way new homes are conceived and constructed.
You can register your interest via our online registration form...
Or contact us via email: kustomercon@gmail.com
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