Designing a new home before you have decided on a preferred building site. I just about fell into this trap myself. The property where I lived for the last seven years was sold last year quite unexpectedly, we knew we wanted to build but didn't even have a property. Obviously our first priority was to find a nice property, but with the anticipation and excitement of building a new home, we started to draw a sketch plan of what we wanted. Let me tell you, it's nothing like what we are now building.

Sure it's important and essential to start on the planning process, such as, preferred style and materials etc. Because when we decide to build we always have a pre-determined use, (ie; holiday home or every day residence). We can decide on how many bedrooms we need, how much entertaining do we do, and how do we feel about open plan living etc. This is the area of pre-planning that should be focused on. Once we have our building site, then we place our energy into floor plan layouts and design around things such as views, wind, and the sun etc. So don't spend time, energy and money in design work until the proposed site is established.

Designing beyond your budget. It's amazing how the cost of our dreams add up. housands can become tens of thousands very quickly. Because Moss Brothers Housing is a design and build company one question I always ask is. How much do you want to spend - just a ball park figure. Interestingly, often people seem to try and avoid telling me. I can only assume that they feel by telling me they're putting themselves at a disadvantage in some way because it might influence the way we price the project. Quite often the end result is that we have to go back to the drawing board and redesign. There are some average square metre new home construction rates that have been put out by the New Zealand Institute of Valuers that we use as a guide (only).

For a modest 100m sq home,(that's 1080ft sq) it will cost from $900.00 (GST inclusive) per square meter. This does not include carpets, drapes, light fittings or services (services are the mains power cable to the street or nearest connection, water mains or supply sewerage and telephone). This figure varies to some extent between geographical location.

It's interesting to note that if you are building smaller, then the square meter rate goes up and equally comes down as the size of the house grows. This is often because the size of the services (as listed above) don't change regardless of size. And of course once a job is set up and running, it's more cost effective to just build a bigger size. But I must emphasise that it's not the size of your new home that is going to determine the end result cost - it's the specification that does all the damage. In other words, the cost will be a direct result of quality of the materials and finishing's used. That's why you quite often hear about the extras on a job being responsible for the budget blow-out, and what you'll find is that standard specified items have been replaced with more expensive ones.

Choosing the cheapest tender without doing your homework on the reasons why. It is so tempting to think that this price is the lowest so I must be getting a great deal. Or sometimes people are actually guilty of knowing that the work can't be carried out for the submitted price but still carry on praying and hoping that nothing will go wrong, and then try to find someone else to blame when it does. Of course this doesn't just apply to new homes, it applies to everything we purchase but for one difference, we can't physically inspect the completed product from plans & specifications. We get what we pay for. And I think we all know people who have bought on the cheap and it's ended up costing them heaps just to get things put right. Ok, so now I've disturbed you, how can you go about protecting yourself against things going bad? Well it's simple.

Spend the time and money in having comprehensive plans and specifications prepared. I'll talk more about this in No.4. With a good set of documents you can feel confident when giving the plans out for tender. But you will find that you will only confuse yourself and unfairly waste someone else's time if there are more than three builders tendering. It's also my suggestion that the tenders are told to supply a fixed price on the information provided. After that, and only after that, can they make suggestions to the specification to vary the price. And that information must be kept separate from the main tender price.

Ok, how to select the tenders, or who will you get to price for you? Obviously starting by word of mouth, recommendation and referral from someone who has already employed the builder is a great way to start. But if it's a guarantee of tradesmen standard, materials and most importantly completion as per the plans and specification, on time and within budget then I suggest that you employ a Registered Master Builder. Why? Well, the New Zealand Master Builders Federation has set up a new company called Master Build Services Ltd. The sole purpose for this company's conception was to provide bomb proof guarantee for people having a new home or renovation built, and a more professional service from the builders. So coming back to selecting a cheap price and not being guaranteed of a successful end result. When a Registered Master Builder has his price accepted by you, his work is automatically protected by the a 5 Year New Home Guarantee and Master Build Services. Before the builder starts on site Master Build Services checks the builders quote and plans to make sure that the project can be built for the price submitted. Then they go about making sure that happens. It's real peace of mind for you as the new owner. By the way, would you buy a new car, or anything for that matter, without a guarantee? I doubt it. So why do we often risk all when building a new home? There's so much at stake and so many things can go wrong. As I said before, it's so easy. Get yourself a Registered Master Builder and that will automatically secure your investment with the Master Build Guarantee. One other warning, your Master Builder probably won't give you the cheapest price.

Here are two other ways you can have confidence in selecting a builder. First, pay an independent person, say, another Registered Master Builder, a draughtsmen or someone closely related to the building industry, to advise on who they would select if the quotes were for them, and ask them to give reasons why. Be sure to remove the tenders name before your expert views the pricing to avoid prejudice or preference. And the other way to select is to ask the preferred builder for the name and contact phone numbers of at least their last 5 clients and speak to all of them. The best tell all question must be, would you employ them again. Hey, this may seem like a lot of work, but what's at stake here. The fact is, laziness is the reason most people choose solely on price.