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Now Is The Time For Planning Your Home Build

You have your heart and mindset on building a new home. No matter the current global situation, you are determined that a new home is going to happen at some stage. Now is a good time to start working on the practical stuff, while you and your partner have some enforced downtime.

WHERE TO START?

Firstly, it is important to realise that Latitude Homes are still operational. We are still communicating via phone, email and messaging, helping people to tweak their plans, answering questions, looking up possible building sites, organising drawings and generally everything except being 'on the tools'.

You can download the first home builders guide to get started with your planning. For this blog we've enlisted the help of one of our clients who has just gone through the process, here she describes what she organised to get the planning process underway.

I checked out my local Latitude Homes builder profile, checked his reviews and stalked him a bit on social media. It seemed like the kind of builder I could work with.

The first thing I did was take a serious look at the section I wanted to build on. Not an ideal site for an off-the-shelf plan as the section is a long and skinny site.  I thought about what was important to me to live happily in my future home. Of course, the basics - how many bedrooms, bathrooms, garages and all importantly where is my scullery going to be?

Armed with this information, I headed to the House Plans page on the website & started my search, and picked a couple of build options for consideration. Given the unusual site, I knew this was going to be customised to suit. So I looked for the most suitable house plans that fit most needs and printed them out. I got out the old vivid marker and moved walls, shifted the kitchen five times until I was happy with a proposed configuration.

Then I revisited my wishlist and my section. Am I getting enough light? Have I allowed some space between boundaries? What are my neighbours going to see?

I took photos of my marked-up plans, and emailed them to my local builder, with a bunch of 'is this possible' type questions, including - 'can I customise this plan.' The answer as always with Latitude Homes, was "of course, too easy"

This kick-started the planning process and now we are in regular contact about the next steps. He's with me all the way.

WHAT WERE MY BUILD OPTIONS? 

Being someone who likes to look at the details about what I might get from any Latitude Home I headed over to www.latitudehomes.co.nz/build-options to determine the practicalities of building. Did I want to do it myself? No way. So I downloaded the Building Specifications on a Full Build and took a thorough look at everything that came with this option. This was very useful information and gave me more confidence to know what does and doesn't come with the build.

I followed on with downloading the First Home Buyers Guide, which led me through the nitty-gritty considerations to discuss with my partner. I feel like I am in control, and well informed.

This takes a bit of time especially when there is more than one person involved in the decision-making process. But once you have your ideas organised and you reach out to the Latitude Homes team, they can quickly give you a great insight into what will work and what won't.

Checking sections online helps in the interim while we are all in lockdown. Discussing things like timing, finance, and budgets and stepping through the drawing and consent process - even offering ideas about things I had not considered were all able to be done while I had some considerable time to digest it, rather than react and make quick and uninformed decisions.

We will start the actual build in a few months when consent comes through, and excited to know that I have made fully informed decisions to get the house of my dreams within my reach with the Latitude Homes team.

So plan now, things are changing quickly and the Latitude Homes team will see you through this planning stage while you have time.

Go on, give them a call today.