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How to Choose the Right Plan for Your New Home

^{Guest Feature by

Ken Katuin}

1. Choose a House Plan That Suits Your Land
Choose a plan that fits the characteristics of your land. It's better to make the house fit the land rather than try to make the land fit the house. Also, the size and shape of your lot affects the type of home you can build on the lot.

2. Be Open-minded
It's important to be open-minded when looking at houses. By doing this, you'll learn things you never realized. Over time, your 'ideal' home will evolve and change. If you are like most people, you will probably buy a home that is different from what you thought you wanted. Don't quickly discard houses. You will have a better understanding of what you want by taking a close look at many houses.

3. Exteriors Are Easy to Change
Some people will only look at a house if they like its appearance. However, usually the house's exterior can easily be changed. The changes to an exterior can be so dramatic that you won't realize you are looking at the same house. To change the exterior, you can use different windows, modify roof lines, and change exterior details. Don't judge a home by its appearance. It's the inside that really counts. After all, you'll spend 90% of your time on the inside of your home.

4. Hidden Potential
You might discard the right home because you don't see its hidden potential. For example, say you don't like living rooms and you avoid houses that have living rooms. However, a living room could serve another purpose. It could become a den, a nursery, or an additional bedroom. It could also be an excellent dining room. Changing the location of a doorway or adding a wall may convert a room into something you would really love. Sometimes all you need to do is rename a room. When looking at houses, look for the hidden potential.

5. Perfect Homes Don't Exist
Some people spend years searching for the perfect home. However, they never find it because their perfect home is a fantasy. It doesn't really exist. Be realistic when shopping for a home. Ask yourself what are features you must have and what are features you want to have. When you find a house that meets your requirements, it may not have all of your wants. However, if you hold on to your dream of a perfect home, you might pass up the right house and regret it later.

You need a good team to give shape to your dream home. You have to plan well while choosing the right team, from the architect to the carpenter

Time and resources alone do no help in the construction of your dream home. It is a concerted effort of several people that builds your house brick-by-brick and day-by-day.

Among the good construction practices is planning which essentially includes budgeting and scheduling of work. But in effect, another element is choosing the best available people right from drawing the plan of your house to the final stages of occupying your house.

Experts at the Help Centre of Associated Cement Companies (ACC) here say that choosing the right people for various tasks help complete your job successfully and without much pain.

An architect is the foremost person who gives shape to your dream house. He is the one who understands your requirements and puts on paper a plan for your house on the land selected by you.

But do you need an architect? Many people would ask. It is the architect who ensures that the plan for your house meets the necessary guidelines and legal requirements of Government and local bodies. Apart from that, a professional supervises the construction from the beginning to the end. An architect is the most important person involved in building your house, ACC experts say.

An architect helps you in the selection of labour contractors as well as materials. Normally his/her terms of payment are calculated either per square foot basis or a percentage of the total construction.

The next important person in the construction of your house is the engineer. He/she is the one who prepares the complete construction designs for the structure from foundation to roof. He/she is also responsible for the quality of construction. Usually an engineer employs a work supervisor and a site supervisor to assist him and to make the construction activities go smoothly.