Here's a mistake I see more often than I'd like. A family falls in love with a beautiful set of plans drawn by a designer or architect they found online, they hand the plans to a builder, and the builder quietly winces. The home looks gorgeous on paper, but it's been designed without a single conversation about what it'll actually cost to build, or whether it suits the block, or whether the materials are sensible for our coastal climate.
The result is almost always the same. Either the build comes in dramatically over budget and the family has to compromise on finishes they'd already fallen for, or the design has to be reworked at the eleventh hour, which costs even more time and money. I've watched people spend tens of thousands on plans that simply never get built.
The fix is simple. Bring your builder and your designer to the same table early, ideally before the concept design is locked in. A designer who's never built a thing in their life doesn't know what a slab on a sloping coastal block actually costs, or how the cost of a feature wall stacks up against a smaller, smarter window layout. A builder who's left out of the design process can't flag those things until it's too late.
A good Turquoise Coast builder will happily sit with your designer and have those honest conversations up front. We'll point out where the design is going to blow the budget, where there's a cheaper way to get the same feel, and where it's worth spending the extra dollar because it'll pay you back in comfort or resale.
This is one of the reasons we keep an in-house design process where we can. It means the team that's drawing your custom new home is the same team that's going to build it, price it and stand behind it. There's no finger-pointing later when something doesn't add up.
If you'd like to chat about how we bring design and build together for family homes around the Turquoise Coast, you'll find us at inh.com.au/TurquoiseCoast.
Cheers, Darcy.
