House hunting should be an exciting time where you tour different homes and examine different floor plans to find the one that will best suit your lifestyle and budget. However, if you dive into the process with little preparation, you may find yourself in a whirlwind of too big, too small, not enough rooms, or just not your fit. Set yourself up for success by asking just a few questions about your current and future custom home needs.
How Much Do You Want to Spend on Your Custom Home?
Is the home you’re seeking a second home in Southwest Florida where you will reside part-time? Are you looking for a retirement home where you will live full-time? Are you selling your current home before moving into your new home? Each one of these questions will affect your current financial situation and help properly establish a budget to allow you a guideline for finding homes within the parameters in which you are comfortable.
When establishing a price range, you should also take into consideration the additional fees that may be associated with the new home. For example, association fees, maintenance fees, and home watch fees (if you’ll only be residing part-time) should all play a part when deciding on a price range for your new custom home.
You will also want to decide whether you will be paying cash or financing. Both options will require some discussion and preparation to make the best decision for you and your family, as does establishing how far you are willing to tweak the price range to incorporate everything you want in a home.
How Happy Are You in Your Current Home?
Determining whether you are happy in your current home will aid in discovering the things you like or dislike about the size of a home. Is your current home too big, too small, or just right? Are there rooms in your current home that you do not utilize and don’t plan on utilizing? Are there rooms in your home that you cannot live without?
Consider the rooms you keep for when family visits or rooms that you need to host dinner parties or entertain guests. If you have children or grandchildren that stay with you during their vacation or holiday, you’ll want a home that has enough space to accommodate all of them, like in Somerset in Spice Bay Sarasota with four bedrooms in over 5,000 square feet.
For entertainment spaces, guests will adore the open floor plan of The Camberdale and you’ll love how easy it is to be the host of the party with a spacious open floor plan that leads to the outdoor living space of the home.
Speaking of outdoor spaces, these questions should also extend to the outdoor spaces of your home. Is your backyard too big or your front yard too small? Do you have and take advantage of a pool or spa? Before deciding on a home, you should think about how important outdoor living is to your Florida lifestyle and what features you most like to utilize when you’re lounging outside. If you spend a significant amount of time outside, you’ll love a home with a spacious outdoor space or even a courtyard.
London Bay Homes’ Isabella Grande model home has an exquisite outdoor space. Assessing the spaces you use and don’t use in your current home will provide a list of the must-have spaces for your new home.
How Much Time Do You Have for Home Maintenance?
Whether you’re doing the maintenance yourself or hiring a company to do it for you, home maintenance requires time and effort. When considering the features in your future home, decide how much time you will want to set aside for maintaining that home.
Larger homes require more maintenance, as do homes that have large outdoor spaces, unless you are considering maintenance free homes in Florida. There are neighborhoods in Mediterra, Miromar Lakes Beach & Golf Club, and other luxury home communities in which London Bay Homes is a preferred luxury home builder in Florida that are maintenance free, providing you with a reprieve from such tasks.
Another option for living in a home that requires little maintenance is purchasing a luxury condo. If you are a homeowner that is only living in Florida part-time or you spend your time traveling the world for business or pleasure, a luxury condo may be just what you need.
Condominiums, such as London Bay Homes’ Grandview at Bay Beach, assess condo association fees to cover common area maintenance, which means anything necessary to maintain the property, keep it clean, and take care of any repairs outside of the interior of your luxury condo. You can forget about having to do or oversee lawn maintenance, exterior painting, upgrades, or anything else that has to do with the exterior of the building and common areas. These fees are also a shared expense since residents of condominiums own their homes individually, but have joint-ownership of the building as a whole. This means any maintenance and repairs needed will be covered by the association fees paid by all of the residents.
Will Your Needs be Changing in the Future?
When building a custom home in Southwest Florida, you will always want to consider what changes may be heading your way. Do you plan on having any/more children that will require you to add rooms to your floor plan? Will you be retiring and discovering a new hobby that will require additional space, such as a craft room?
Maybe you’ll bide your time buying classic cars for which you’ll need extra garage space. Maybe you’ll decide to work from home and will be in need of a home office. You may even realize that certain areas of the home will be unnecessary in the near future and you can save money by eliminating them now. Try to plan for the future to avoid overspending now or setting yourself up to spend more if you decide this home is too small.
Are you ready to dive into finding the ideal home for you? London Bay Homes, your reputable luxury home builder in Florida, can assist you in designing and building your dream custom home. With 30 years of experience, London Bay Homes has created the finest luxury homes in Naples, Estero, Sarasota, and throughout the Southwest Florida area and have done so using our signature Private Label Living process.
Download our brochure to learn more about London Bay Homes or begin touring our luxury model homes to see our quality design and craftsmanship.
