How to get the Best Home Design, Best Quality and Best Price from the Best House Builder: BEST QUALITY

Once you have a clear idea about the basic layout of your home, it is time to obtain a Estimate price of what it would cost to build the home. Ideally, your building consultant would have provided some basic guidelines and parameters to control the likelihood of a budget blowout.

Just how you get the best possible price is the topic of a different article on this website

Right now, we want to begin the process of defining ‘finish’ and ‘quality’ issues, because understanding what these terms mean, will help indentify good ‘quality’ when you see it.

By working with ballpark figures, you will begin to have a basic understanding of the costs and can broadly begin to monitor the effect selection of the various inclusion options have on those costs.

Quality

Inclusions are sometimes confused with quality, and it makes sense at this stage to define what we mean when we use terms such as ‘quality’. To my mind, basic quality revolves around the ‘finish’ of the product. So let’s start with examining just how this vital element of the house building experience is achieved.

A good House Builder should achieve an exceptional finish even if the inclusions are fairly basic. Achieving an exceptional finish is almost without exception a management issue, and relates to how well the House Builder manages the work of the sub-contractors, and his relationship with them.

A good Tradesman can sometimes cover for a bad manager, but a good manager will always be able to avoid the ill-effects of a bad tradesman. In order to determine the likelihood of your home being finished to a high standard, we need to examine the relationship of the Builder to not only his sub-contractors, but also his employees in order to get a feel for the kind of people manager he is.

There are a few simple steps we can use to determine this:

1. Talk to a few past and current customers. It helps if when you finally get to speak with a referee, you know what to ask. One of the questions on the list is how effective the boss is; whether he runs the job; whether the job runs him. We want to know if he was current on all issues as they arose on site.
2. You also need to ask for their opinion of the supervision and management of their job. Too many Builders rely on third parties such as suppliers and sub-contractors to manage the job; often by default.
3. Visit one or two of the Builder's Building sites. Does it seem to be a well maintained building site? Does it appear to be a safe site? Is it organised with building materials stacked in an orderly fashion?

None of these things by themselves or collectively guarantee a quality job, but a well managed building site is one of the strongest indicators that quality issues on your job will be well managed too. Quality is also an important ‘Value’ indicator. So use these suggestions in conjunction with those I recommend in relation to obtaining the best price.

Quality Inclusions

A dear and old friend of mine, upon observing me get wrapped up in the features of my new mobile phone, once remarked that one would think I invented the damn thing they way I carried on about it. It was at once a sobering and humbling experience. I often wonder if the sentiment does not equally apply to the very many Builders that advertise their ‘Quality Inclusions’; it would be more impressive if they manufactured those inclusions themselves.

I suppose you can gauge from this that I consider this to be a personal choice. I have seen fantastic results in homes that comprise of fairly run-of-the-mill inclusions, and lousy ones in homes with the best quality inclusions. The Inclusions by themselves will not make up for poorly conceived design and poor quality workmanship. At best it can put a gloss on a bad situation, like lipstick on a pig.

Nevertheless, it does pay to use items of good quality in your home. Most builders should be able to offer ‘standard’ type upgrades for Prime Costs items at a reasonable cost. This helps in keeping cost from escalating out of control. It pays to be discerning about where you spend your money, and not get carried away.  Spend it in areas that are important to you, and adds value and utility to your living spaces

Now you're clear about what it takes to have the best quality for your new home, let's take a look at how to get the Best Builder.