Determine a budget and Locate Your Property

Determine a Budget

Consider up front costs versus operating/maintenance/replacement costs.  If this is a house you may want to stay in for the rest of your life, it may be worth it to bite the bullet and upgrade certain items to reduce costs down the line.  For instance, the Insulated Concrete Form walls won’t rot, burn or blow away (at least not easily).  We would have really loved to use brick siding, but that really would have blown our budget (and it is possible to add it later, but you can’t add ICF later).

Costs can be significantly higher than a standard home.  We all love to read the wonderful, inspirational stories about the people who “worked with their builder and suppliers” to build/remodel for the same amount as conventional materials.  The truth is, whenever you choose materials that are not the current market norm, whatever that may be, you will typically pay a premium.  The materials themselves often cost more, it is extra work for your builder/supplier to source them for you and in some cases they cost more to install because the crews may not be familiar with them.  Accept this up front and don’t expect the builder to give you the moon on a chain.

One way to save money is to build up - a two story house is generally cheaper than a ranch.  A walkout ranch also saves as it makes the basement true living space without increasing costs.  You have shared foundation and roof between levels, which reduces your cost per square foot overall.  Obviously building a smaller house is generally less expensive, too, but this can present some problems with accessibility if you go too small.  (See Accessibility/Universal Design)

The traditional idea of dollars per square foot generally only applies to “tract houses”, not custom homes.  You need to figure out what you want to build and get a quote.  The normal cost per square foot estimates make assumptions that are probably not correct for your home, especially if you include the less common items, which you are probably interested in since you are reading this.  Cost per square foot assumes many things such as: flooring, types of wood, finishes, types of windows, electrical fixtures, and types of appliances.  Change these and the price will change correspondingly.

Find your property

Finding the right place to build is critical and will help to determine the final design of your home.  Be prepared, it may take time.  Visit the areas where you would want to live, before you narrow down your search.  If you fall in love with the amenities of a given location (walking distance to services you use each day or to work or school, access to public transportation, close to friends and family, etc), it’s worth considering an existing home in that area.  It’s generally less energy intensive to remodel an existing home than to build new.  Of course, it may be difficult to meet the performance level of a new house, but there’s something to be said for the character of many older buildings.  One item that we would like to note, as strange as it may seem, is to consider which direction you will be driving when/if you commute.  Our preferred choice was to be east of town, so that we don’t end up driving into the sun each morning and night.

Once you’ve decided where you want to be, start looking for available properties in that area.  We highly recommend hunting around on your own before contacting a realtor.  The reason we say this is because no ones cares as much about your home as you do.  Realtors make more money when they sell more homes.  They don’t make any extra if they show you fifty homes instead of five, and generally they’ll make less money because they could be showing five homes each to nine other people.  We were told by one realtor that if a buyer didn’t purchase after being shown five homes they were not serious about buying.  At this point we had looked at over 100 homes on our own.  This was not the realtor for us.

With online resources it’s easier than ever to find what you want. We used www.realtor.com quite a bit (you can predefine the type of land and price ranges and have it report them to you).  In our area there are some realtors who do not do business on the internet.  This may be worth looking into, as their asking prices are often lower than their competitors.  Check out newspaper listings.  There just may be a For Sale By Owner that’s perfect for you.

You should be able to get tax parcel information online for more populated areas, we used the Kewaunee GIS  and the Brown County GIS. This should allow you to get information regarding taxes, and property ownership for the areas you are looking at building in.  These sites and sites such as www.mappoint.com can provide latitude and longitude information.

It took us nine months to find the right piece of land.  Also beware realtors, in general they will want you to choose from 3 to 5 pieces of property and make a decision, we looked at over 40 potential properties and even had an offer pending on one 15 acre parcel.  The 15 acre piece was so close we even staked out where the house would be; but it fell through and we kept looking.  Patience and tenacity are required, if we gave up after the numerous setbacks, we would not be here today.

What we looked for.  Our goal was to find property with a slope to the south to permit a south facing walkout ranch, or earth bermed south facing home.  We looked primarily east of the city, so we were not driving into the sun in the morning and night.

Why sloped? If you find a sloped property it will be easier to get a walkout.  If you have the acreage already, place the home on the land with good south exposure.  If there is no slope, pay the cat to move the earth around to create a slope (we did some of that).  You don’t have to do a full-blown passive solar design, but take advantage of natural daylighting/sunlight as much as possible; in fact even a non-passive solar home has advantages when faced south.  You can place grapes, or other fruit that require sheltering along the south side of the house.  Grapes are a good choice as they shade in the summer and allow sun to hit the home during the day.  In southern climates, shading is a real goal.  Overhangs are good for shading in the summer and protecting the siding in northern climates (and shading south windows in the north).  4ft overhangs were more common years ago, take advantage of them, they cost little more and provide a good bang for the buck.