Building your dream home can be difficult. It is easy to have a vision of everything you want in a place to live, but when you start looking, you may find you have to sacrifice on location, price and many other things. One thing you shouldn’t sacrifice on, however, is quality design – and that’s why it’s important to take sensible steps towards your dream home. Here are the ones you should consider:
Hire the right realtor
Hiring the right realtor can be difficult. Sometimes someone can act as an agent for you and scout out homes that could be the best pick. They are also often connected to other realtors, which can be helpful because they essentially have a big black book of numbers to call up, and people who might have the home you’re looking for. This is especially the case if you are looking to move states. Getting a recommendation off of others is often a good way to go with realtors – looking online can be helpful. Still, your friends will often have similar tastes to you (preferences in houses vary a lot), and someone that worked well for them is likely to work well for you.
Gauge the sort of commission which different agents take to get a sense of how much you are willing to forgo on your property price. It might end up being worth it, but you need to decide from the offset whether you’re going to splash out – are you happy for someone to take a 10% cut of your purchase price?
Choose appropriate furniture
Thinking about furniture for a new place is a good idea. Although you may be tempted to make use of furniture from your previous property, this often doesn’t fit in your new place. Think about warm and light colors, and how to make the most of the room. Also, consider how the property looks when you do your viewing – is the furniture there being used by the old owners, and might they consider leaving it behind for a sum? Has the house been “staged” by realtors – in which case the furniture may be pricey, but is likely to have been picked out by experts, and might be the best, most tasteful way of decorating the place. Local galleries can also be a good way of finding artwork to fill the room, and many have consultants who can assess your property and what might fit in it.
Combine the design and architectural work
If you want to adjust or redesign any aspect of the property, aligning your vision in terms of design and architecture can be difficult. Consulting a professional is helpful, but you often want a single point of contact, who can bring on different contractors for any work that needs to be done on the property, rather than going to someone different for the electrics, for the design and so on. The difficulty with many modern houses is that everything from the plumbing to flooring is intricately connected and interdependent. This is where design build remodeling comes in – it combines the areas of expertise under one person, which means you don’t spend your day chasing up different people who may try to pass accountability onto one another.
Conduct a survey
Houses can look great from the outside, and even inside. But deep inside, they may not be. The previous owners could have had a new kitchen fitted because they knew that’s what buyers wanted – but have done it on the cheap, so it falls apart as soon as you start using it. This is where surveyors are key. They can do a comprehensive report on the property – everything from the grade of electricity efficiency, to the plumbing, whether there’s damp, and whether the walls are solid. Organizing a survey through your lawyers is often strongly advised before proceeding with your purchase – they can help you find a licensed surveyor who may become key later on in the process if you have any problems, as you can challenge the surveyor.
Make use of a moving company
When you have a couple of cars, it’s often easy to think you might be able to transport all your things from one house to another in them. This is often much harder than it looks – carrying things down the stairs can result in backache or other injuries while cramming furniture into the trunk of your car could damage your favorite vintage dresser (or your car). A smarter idea is to hire a moving company. They are insured, and they are trained to do risky maneuvers like dragging sofas up flights of stairs – so you won’t end up a couch down by the end of the process. Best of all, you can enjoy moving day, instead of fretting about covering everything to transport it. So, there you have it – lots of things to consider for the quality design of your new house. But finally, once you move in and have made all the tweaks you want to the property, it is good to try and relax and enjoy your surroundings. No property is perfect, and it doesn’t help to find ways of changing things continually – often the initial unease with a new place arises from it being different to your old home, and in a couple of months you may be very happy. But by keeping an eye out for what does and doesn’t suit you about the house – at least a year or so after moving in, you can gauge if there are any changes to be made.