Thursday 30 October 2014

New Build Homes in Birmingham – Mistakes To Avoid When Building a New Home

When it comes to designing your own new build home, as you are investing so much time and money, it is important to avoid making mistakes during the planning stages. It is always recommended to work with skilled building contractors to make sure your home will be built to suit you and your family. It is also crucial that you should choose new build professionals who are experienced in creating purpose built family homes.

You may feel that you have properly thought through all of your plans to build your dream home, but have you looked at your plans from every angle? Whilst you may have spent a lot of time thinking about what will work for you and what you will need, there is a good chance that you won’t have spent much time thinking about what won’t work for you and what you won’t need.

Here are our top 5 mistakes to avoid when building a new home for your family:

Overall Planning – When you are working with new build professionals in Birmingham to design your home, it is absolutely crucial to take your family’s lifestyle and habits into consideration. What will your family need in the short term, but also in the long term? If you have children, is your new build home design suitable for them, and in the future, will your home be suitably for elderly people, or if not, will it be easy to make modifications? Essentially, when looking what the overall planning of your ideal home, what will you need from it?

Space Planning – Unless you plan to build an absolutely huge home where space isn’t an issue, careful space planning is essential. Think about the overall space that your property will cover, and then consider how much space you will need for each room, as well as creating enough storage space.

Room Placement – It is always worth spending a lot of time thinking about room placement; deciding where is the best place for each room to be to best fulfil its function. In any house, certain areas will naturally be louder, or busier and messier, so it is important to take this into consideration. If you are unsure where the ideal placement for each room is, you can talk to your specialist building contractors.

·         Bedroom – Try to keep the master bedroom as far away from outside noise and traffic as possible. It also makes sense to keep the master bedroom as far away as possible from living areas. If your house is planned on one storey, you should locate the master bedroom at on opposite end of the house to the main living space, whereas in a two storey house, avoid placing the master bedroom directly above downstairs living areas.
·         Kitchen – It makes sense for the kitchen to be placed near a main entry to the house. For example, when you bring in the groceries, rather than traipsing around living areas in your dirty shoes to get to the kitchen and put your shopping away, you can walk straight into the kitchen. A popular choice is to place your kitchen near a back, side or garage entrance.

Lighting – Many houses are poorly lit. First of all, you should try to have as much natural light as possible by including many windows in your house design. With windows as large as possible, natural sunlight can be your main source of light. Try to plan your home so that your main living spaces are in the right area of the house to get light at the right times of day.

Make your own decisions – It is crucial to find new build professionals that will be on hand to give you useful advice throughout the design and build of your home, but will leave you to make the ultimate decisions. You know better than anyone what you and your family need, so building contractors should respect this and work with you to build your ideal home.

Pantheon Construction are building contractors that specialise in new build homes in Birmingham. For more information on the services that they can provide, you can visit www.pantheonconstruction.co.uk.

Friday 3 October 2014

The Advantages of Buying a New Build Home

Looking to buy a house but can’t decide what to go for? Here are five reasons why a high quality, new build home has so much more to offer than a previously owned property. 

First choice

Buying new build homes means you have exciting options to choose from in a range of styles, shapes and sizes. Regardless of whether it’s a three-bedroom family home or a modern flat, you can be sure that everything about the new build home will be bright, fresh and clean. There won’t be any walls to strip and re-paint, no worn carpets to replace, and no dismal DIY projects done by the previous owner to dismantle. New builds are all yours to furnish how you want – a blank canvas on which you can express your own personality.

Greener and more efficient

New build houses are definitely greener, generating around 60% less C02 emissions than older properties and are also more energy efficient. Built to modern environmental standards and making maximum use of space, new builds are also well insulated, which means they will cost less to heat than an old house and are kinder to the environment. New builds also require less upkeep and maintenance than older buildings.

Quality and security

The quality of new builds is generally excellent in the UK and any reputable house builder will offer an extensive warranty on the property, as well as a customer care service plan. With a new build you’ll also have the opportunity to discuss any concerns you have with the builder, or to make any special requests. Many new build homes will come with alarm systems included and will also be designed with the latest safeguards in terms of fire and electrical safety.

Get moving

When buy a new build home you don’t have to wait for anyone to move out before you can move in! There won’t be any of the last minute delays so often associated with buying a previously owned property, and once you’ve paid your reserve or deposit, there’s no fear of someone coming along and beating your offer, or the deal falling through for some other reason. Once you have the completion date, you can start to plan for the big day when you get the keys to your new home.

Property ladder

There are a number of schemes that can make buying new build houses especially attractive for anyone wanting to get onto the property ladder. Government schemes such as FirstBuy and NewBuy offer special deals to anyone buying a brand new house, which can make all the difference in what is an important investment.