Building a New Home Basics
By Edward Jonstone

Building a new home can be a very stressful project to take on, especially if you have been saving up for this day for a long time and don’t want anything to go wrong. It is best to be fully prepared before you start the project so that you can reduce the chances of any mistakes being made that could prove to be costly for you in the future.

To start off, figure out how much you can afford to spend. This will end up influencing a lot of your decisions like the kind of architect you hire, the contractor you sign on, as well as the size of the house. Make a budget, and make sure you and everyone involved in the project is willing to stick to it. Include a ten percent miscellaneous fund or contingency in case you need to spend a little extra.

The next thing to do is to hire a very good architect. Make sure you talk to people you know to find out about the various architects in your city. You should do some research on this as well as set up meetings with your shortlist of architects and talk to each of them about your vision for your house. There is no point in hiring someone who will build a generic plan for you; your house needs to show your style so make sure you go in with a very good idea of the kind of house you want.

This means knowing more than the basic things like number of bedrooms and cost, you need to really think about the way you want your house to look. For example, if you want privacy for each room, if you have a lot of children and want the focus on the living area, or if you want a huge garden.

All these things are very important when the architect makes the plan for your house so make sure you think about these and then sign an architect who can understand it and help make it a reality.

Your architect will also give you options for the plan based on your budget. All the plans will be based on the vision you have for your house, but will have things that are different based on the amount of money you have to spend on the house.

Next, hire a good contractor. Talk to your architect, family and friends about people they know in the business. Look to hire someone with good references, and if you are on a tight budget make sure you hire someone who is known to stay within the budget. Set expectations with the contractor on the amount of influence you will have on daily matters, as you can choose to be very involved or simply sign the checks.

Once you have a good contractor in place and the plan has been finalised, make sure you stay involved with the project to make sure it proceeds according to the plan. While small changes might need to be made here and there, the larger picture needs to remain like the one you envisioned.

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One of the biggest financial decisions most of us make is to choose the terms of the home loan we have on our house. The ramifications of this decision can be huge and there are just so many different products to choose from. It can be a very worrying decision. Perhaps the key is to make sure you do your research and be self aware enough to know what level of risk you can cope with. There is no point saving yourself money, potentially if you are going to worry yourself sick about it.

A fixed rate home loan may appeal to you for your mortgage. Essentially this means that for a certain period of time your repayments on the loan will always be the same. In other words the interest rate on your home loan will not vary. This has got to take a lot of worry out of things for you. You can choose to fix the loan period for between one and five years and no matter what happens your monthly repayments will not rise. This could be the home loan product for you. There are a few things to take into account though. No one can predict with certainty what the market is going to do. It is possible that interest rates will go up and your fixed rate home loan will save you a lot of money. It is also entirely possible that interest rates will go down and in real terms your fixed rate may have cost you money. It is good to have the peace of mind though especially if you are the kind of person who worries.

Another option that you have is the variable rate home loan. This is appealing much to the opposite of the fixed rate loan. In other words it follows the nationwide interest rate. If the rate goes down so do your monthly payments, if it goes up then your monthly repayments will too. It is important to note that these fluctuations can be quite thoughtful. Again, it is impossible to precisely forecast what will happen in the financial system. If you have some room in your monthly budget it may be worth taking the risk on this type of loan.

Variable home loans, just to make things more complicated, come in two different types. A basic version that is pretty much a no frills bottom line, mortgage. Traditionally these are taken out by first home loan buyers who want to get into their first house as soon as possible. They often run at up to half a percent below the national interest rate.

The second type is called a standard variable rate. This is the most common form of home loan and it includes features that are useful such as a redraw facility and phone banking. This type allows you to make extra repayments without penalty which can be a very useful thing.

If all of this seems too perplexing without further explanation then you need to consult the experts. The people at Directmoney Home Loans would love to help you, it is, after all their job.

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