Planning your budget for your custom house build can be a complex and very time intensive process, sometimes it can even take up to a year, or more to plan for the financial aspect of you build so you’ll want to be fully prepared. You should give yourself plenty of time prior to the start of construction and give yourself some financial leeway just in case there are any additional costs that you hadn’t planned for.
Useful budgeting tips
Loans – You should be diligent if you need to borrow funds in order to finance your house build, be especially careful of lenders that offer to lend you more capital than you can afford to pay back. At one time banks were happy to approve loans that were multiple times more than what a person earnt per year, based upon mortgages that weren’t worth the paper they were written on. Only borrow what you absolutely need and don’t fall into the trap of taking on more than you can realistically manage to pay back.
Going over budget – Always allow a little extra headroom for additional costs that you weren’t planning for, as you will no doubt find out, nearly all property builds run over budget, your house building company (called บริษัทสร้างบ้าน in Thai) will, no doubt confirm this for you. Some additional expenses can be completely unavoidable no matter how hard you try, for example, if you start planning well ahead of time, things like construction materials may increase in value. It’s the kind of thing that you can’t really anticipate, although you can allow some head room, just in case.
Costing enquiries – No matter what you do, always ask a few different companies for quotes for the entire build program, and don’t be too tempted to jump at the cheapest price either. Just because a company might offer the cheapest price, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee quality. You’ll want to bear this in mind in a big way when choosing your builder because, you’ll need to make careful considerations to ensure that you get a good price whilst also receiving quality workmanship.
Costs for maintenance – Maintenance isn’t something that most people will think of when going through a home build process however, it should be something that you account for, as it could make all the difference to the building materials and products that you use. For example, consider things like artificial grass, if you were to use real turf then you’d have to factor in the costs of a lawn mower, or paying somebody to maintain your grass for you.
