What You Should Be Asking Your Home Builder

While building your dream home from scratch is certainly exciting, it doesn’t come without challenges and commitment. To ensure your home is built safely, on time, and to your liking, it’s important that you choose a trustworthy, experienced, and reliable builder. You want your builder to not only be your home provider, but your partner and guide throughout the process. To ensure you get it right, here’s a few crucial questions to ask during the vetting process.

• What does your process look like?

It’s very important that you and your homebuilder get on the same page with regards to the process, and at what time you can expect each step to be completed. Typically, your home builder will meet with you to ask about your ideal neighborhood, your budget, and your lifestyle. Afterwards, they’ll start the design and customization process, checking in with you along the way to ensure your home fits your needs.

• What level of customization do you feature?

A “custom” homebuilder provides a wide array of services and options, ranging from cosmetic touch-ups to full 100 percent customization. What you’re probably most interested in is whether your builder will allow you to make changes to the home’s floorplan and architecture by either adding extra rooms, changing the roofline, or expanding the back porch. For decorative surfaces, colors, and fixtures, ask whether the builder has a design center, and what the interior design process is like.

• What features are included in the price?

Before you financially commit to a home builder, make sure that what you consider to be the staples are included in the base price. Things to consider are plumbing, HVAC, electrical, cabinets, countertops, and hardwood floors.

• Can you show me testimonials from previous customers?

Any reputable home builder would be happy to provide testimonials attesting that they made their previous customers happy. Also helpful would be a tour of one of the builder’s current homes under construction, so you can ask about the building process and the builder’s communication style with their client during the construction phase.