Building the luxury custom home you’ve always dreamed of should be an exciting and rewarding experience—but if you don’t select the right home builder, there’s potential for the project to turn into something that’s more akin to your worst nightmare.
To ensure the journey and finished product meets and hopefully exceeds your expectations, here’s what you should look for when selecting a custom home builder.
Experience
We all know that past performance is often the best indicator of future performance, so it’s important to select a builder that has a solid history of designing and delivering high-quality custom projects. Consider how long they have been in the business and how many projects they’ve completed.
While inexperienced builders who are still trying to break into the market may offer a more affordable price tag along with promises of great customer service, it’s unlikely they’ll have as many tried-and-tested processes which have been proven to work over the years, leaving greater potential for things to go wrong.
In contrast, more mature and experienced building companies who have a raft of projects under their belt will have a more in-depth understanding of every element of the design and build process, leaving less room for error. They’re more likely to have a team of highly experienced designers, well established relationships with their suppliers and a proven history of delivering projects to schedule and budget—all factors that indicate they’ll be able to perform well on your project.
A great portfolio
While people opt for a custom home build for a range of reasons, the flexibility to create a home that perfectly matches your unique style and design requirements is likely to be a key driver behind your decision.
By scrutinising each builders’ portfolio of previous projects, you can get a sense for the type of homes they typically produce and if they have a ‘signature style’ they’re best known for. Ideally, the builder should also offer you the opportunity to explore a range of their display homes, allowing you to sample the style, design and quality of their homes and work out what you do and don’t want in your home.
They should also be able to provide you with some examples of previous custom projects they’ve produced for other clients in a range of styles, demonstrating their capability to ‘meet the brief’ no matter what the style of home. While some builders may consider themselves to be a custom builder, if their portfolio of previous work presents examples with only slight variations of a standard design, you may find they’re ill-equipped to successfully channel the specific style and design you want to achieve.
End-to-end service
One of the most common issues when building a custom home is the disparity between what has been designed and what they builder can feasibly produce.
The best way to overcome this is to select a building company that provides a complete, end-to-end service from design through to construction. When the entire project is managed in-house by a single team, you know the designer and builder will always be on the same page and can see eye-to-eye.
There are also benefits from a cost perspective—when your designer and builder work closely together they will have an improved ability to provide faster quotes for each element of your design. This will give you a more thorough understanding of the various costs early on in the piece, so you can make more informed decisions about your design sooner.
Why choose Glenvill
Having been in the business since 1958, Glenvill is one of Melbourne’s most experienced custom home builders. As the specialists in producing premium, high-end custom-designed homes for Melbournians, we have an extensive portfolio of custom projects under our belt where we’ve proven our ability to successfully bring the owners unique sense of taste and style to life.
We always place the customer at the heart of everything we do, which is why we were recently awarded a 98.7% customer satisfaction rating at the 2018 Australian Achiever Awards in the Australia’s Architect Services, Building Design, Building Construction and Interior Design Services category.
Housing design and construction under a single roof and offering customers the opportunity to experience the Glenvill difference first-hand with our collection of display homes, it’s no wonder why so many customers continue to choose Glenvill to create their dream custom home.
Find out more about our bespoke design process or contact us to discuss your custom home project.