Blog Post

There are a lot of myths out there about building your first home:

• That it will quickly become a money pit and swallow your savings whole
• That contractors only exist to rob you blind
• That it will take forever
• That you never end up getting what you really want…

 I’m here to debunk many of those myths so that you can make clear-headed choices and decide on your own terms how to proceed. It’s true enough that some may have gone broke building a new home, but was it the contractor’s fault? A misunderstanding about the process? Or both?

For instance, it’s a common assumption that, to build a home from scratch, you first need to consult with an architect. But which architect? I’ve seen many a client bring in blueprints for “dream homes” that, quite frankly, were so unrealistic they looked more like something out of a science fiction novel.

I’ve heard from other clients that they’d previously tried to build a home, but after pricing the architect’s specs, never pursued it because the house in question was simply too expensive to actually build.

Other clients tell horror stories of small custom home builders who quoted them one price–and one due date–only to add more and more cost and completion days onto the original bid as time marches on.

What can happen in that case is a $500,000 home, which isn’t cheap to begin with but worth it if it’s your “dream” home, can quickly become an $800,000 home, with no visible improvements over the original blueprints, due to hidden costs or unforeseen obstacles.

At WhiteStone Custom Homes we lay it all on the line before the first shovel goes into the ground. That is a part of the process I’m talking about. The more you know, the more details you get into, the clearer your goals and the deeper you get involved in the process, the less fear you will experience and the less vulnerable you’ll be to some of the myths—real or imagined—that are associated with home building.