What Makes a Custom Home Different from Any Other New Build?
If you’ve been following along on our blog, we’ve talked a lot about specific details of a custom home project—from energy efficiency to appliance shopping, and even questions to ask before signing your contract. But what exactly is a custom home, anyway?
Simply put, a custom home is any new-build home where you’re starting from scratch with design, material selection, and everything in-between.
Pretty straightforward, right? Well, it gets tricky. There are a lot of labels thrown around in the home-building industry—custom home, production home, luxury home, you name it! The truth is, labels aren’t important. What is important is knowing what you’re getting into.
Specifically, there are four different tiers, levels or definitions for new-build homes: production homes, semi-production homes, custom homes, and luxury homes. Each and every one of these are excellent options to support your family and lifestyle. But what’s the difference among the four? Let’s dive a little deeper.
What is a production home?
Have you ever driven through a neighborhood where all the houses look more or less the same? These are production homes. Specifically, a production home process requires you to choose from a selection of four to six floor plans. From there, the company builds it on an empty lot of theirs and has complete control of the entire process—the land, appliances, materials, everything. You’ll most likely pay a deposit in the beginning of the project, and then the full amount to be mortgaged once the new build is completed. The benefit of building a production home is that you get a brand-new, beautiful house that’s well designed. Because the homes are so similar, they’ve been built the same over and over again, which means the builders have most likely refined the plans based on past lessons.
What is a semi-production home?
Semi-production homes are usually built on smaller lots. Similar to a production home, you’ll choose from a selection of limited floor plans. The difference is, you may have the ability to change a couple of non-bearing walls, depending on the semi-production builder. You'll also have a few other selections to make. For example, you may be able to choose from six countertops—sometimes at different price points—or the color of your exterior materials, like your siding or brick. Contrary to production homes, not every house looks the same in a semi-production neighborhood. In fact, some associations have rules that similar house plans can't be right next to each other.
What is a custom home?
As mentioned before, a custom home is any new-build where you’re starting from scratch. You’ll work with an architect by first presenting your vision. This could be in the form of photographs, internet scrapbooks or maybe even notebooks filled with inspiration. From there, the architects will help you select everything within budget—and we mean everything. Take flooring, for example. Let’s say you want warm wood floors. As architects, we’ll help you narrow that down a bit. We’ll also help you choose any exterior materials with suggestions like wood siding, or upgrading to concrete board siding for low maintenance. The bottom line? You get to choose from anything in the whole wide world for your custom home. Pretty neat, right?
What is a luxury home?
The biggest difference between a custom home and a luxury home comes down to one thing: budget. Luxury homes are a blast to create, because there are zero parameters. For custom homes, we’re overly conscious of making choices based around your established budget. As a caveat, everyone has a budget—whether it’s half a million or over a million. But that being said, in the luxury market, decisions are based around what the client wants versus how it works within their budget.
Have any questions?
Although we covered a lot in this post, you may still have some other questions about the different types of new-build homes. Whether you’re involved in the custom home process now, or even just considering it, join our free Facebook group—we’ll help you answer any questions you might have! Also, feel free to invite anyone that you think would benefit from this collaborative. You’ll not only get advice from me, but from other people who have been through this, too.
Start the process.
When it comes to designing and building a custom home, nothing beats having a trusted, experienced team of architects on your side. Let’s set up a call to meet, discuss your goals, answer your questions, and settle your fears. We can’t wait to meet you!