One of the many steps you must follow before acquiring your dream home is choosing the best builder available to cater to your needs. Reputable builders like Residential Building WA are always dedicated to assisting those who would like to get their dream house done by professionals.
This article will provide you with the steps for choosing a builder for your dream home, so continue to read below to know more about this.
Word of Mouth
The first thing you need to do to find the best builder is to get advice from your family or friends who have recently taken a construction service.
Word of mouth is the best job quality advertisement because they witnessed the work of their recommended builders face-to-face. The good thing about this kind of information is that you can know whether they had a great experience with the workers or just a complete nightmare.
Moreover, be careful in listening to a friend of friends’ recommendations since they might suggest builders that you cannot trust. There is a chance that they will not prioritize you because they only feel that they are doing your friend of a friend a favor.
You can put your trust in your architect’s recommendations because they usually work with someone they trust to justify their design of your home.
Builder Legitimacy
The next series of steps would focus on finding out the legitimacy of the builder that you are conversing with. There are a couple of things to check so that you can examine if they are really the best out there to build your home.
Inclusion of Licenses and Insurance
One thing to check your builder’s legitimacy is to find out the status of their licenses as well as the inclusion of insurance for their work. You can put up your trust in builders who are insured, licensed, and registered.
Be aware that some builders might not be honest with the status of their licenses and permits to operate. Some of them are already expired or have been revoked, but they are still involved in the industry.
Law regulators might not be so swift in catching these kinds of deceptions, so it is up to you to be one step ahead of them.
The minimum requirements they should be able to show you are Public Liability Insurance (PLI) and Home Building Compensation (HBC).
You can check if their registrations are legit through the Housing Industry of Australia (HIA), or you can ask the Master Builders of Australia (MBA) to see if they are a member of this organization.
You can also see a list of all registered and licensed builders in your state or territory’s Department of fair trade or consumer affairs.
Evaluating Skills and Experience
Now, if you are building your dream home from scratch, you do not want builders who only have experience with renovation work. You need to question whether they possess the expertise and the skills to build a house.
Take note of their past works because residential home builders might not have the skills to construct and work with complex extensions and renovations.
Checking Portfolio and References
In this part of choosing your builder, you can check their portfolio by visiting a home they have recently worked with. In this way, you can ask their previous client about their experience and whether they are satisfied with the result or not.
You should also familiarise yourself with the jargon that builders often use while conversing with a potential client. If you can’t look it up, you can always ask them to explain it furthermore.
This way, you could know more about the person you are dealing with and whether or not they could be trusted with building your dream house.
Making Sure That You Don’t Get Ripped Off
If everything looks good so far, you will need assurance that you will not get ripped off from your chosen contractors. You will be spending a lot of hard-earned money on this project, so make sure that you will do your homework.
Aside from the building plans that will cover the entirety of the construction job, it would be helpful to prepare, with the help of your architect, a ‘tender package’ like the following below:
- Scope of the work – This outlines the work to be done and services to be rendered by the builder. Indicate if you are outsourcing the job or will be doing it by yourself.
- Building plans and legal documents – These papers should include all the legal and technical documents and plans for the construction of your house. It might consist of engineering documents and soil tests. These documents would also help the builders correctly estimate the total materials and labour costs and the scheduled completion timeframe.
- Timeframe – Essential parts of the construction schedule process should also be listed. These phases will identify the work progress if everything is under schedule.
After receiving the documents mentioned above, the builder will now quote you, but be secure and check if everything is correctly itemized. The list should include all the materials and labour processes involved in all construction phases.
Don’t Be Hasty In Signing That Contract
Do not quickly sign the contract if you still have doubts about the builder you are conversing with. It would be a great help to have a legal advisor check the agreement and see if everything works fine for your cause.
This is the house of your dreams, so it would not hurt to take a little more time examining the whole construction process as well as the legality of all documents presented to you.