Here’s a Selections Guidebook I created with two main purposes: 

No.1-To illustrate the pitfalls of the typical way that most homeowners go about ‘making selections’. And, to encourage you to not do it that way!

No.2-To show you how making selections a different way leads to greater success. Success to me means: a better design, avoiding change orders to stay on budget, finished on schedule and feeling confident throughout the entire process!

TO DOWNLOAD THE GUIDEBOOK, click on the image. You may want to read this entire page before you do click, since it takes you to a download.

I consistently talk about the two paths that homeowners can take during their custom home building journey: the typical one (which is not favorable for the homeowner) and other routes that are MUCH better (that serve the homeowner in numerous ways).

This Ideal Path below is what homeowners might imagine and hope that it will be like. Maybe it will be.

The sad reality is that it probably won’t go that way. Oftentimes, it looks more like some variation of the path shown below which is one that I’ve personally seen with clients and constantly read about in online building groups.

How can you figure out ahead of time which version of the path you’ll actually end up taking? Well, you can’t. Unless, you know what you are doing.

You can increase the odds of having a more successful experience (like the Ideal Path)….IF you do this one thing–which is to become well informed before you ever hire an architect or get started down the road.  Unfortunately, this is NOT what the typical homeowner does. 

Here’s a very brief overview (shown below) of what I mean by ‘well informed’.

Consider this. You’ll need to do almost all of the items on the list above anyway–so why not move them to the front end?

This is the secret sauce, I promise. Do your legwork and due diligence very early on in the process. Go into the journey well informed. EVERYTHING improves when you do it that way. 

My favorite quote is “to know the journey ahead, ask those coming back.” Well, I’ve been there and back (this whole design and build journey) over one hundred times. As you might imagine, I’ve learned a few things along the way. Namely, that the typical path is not the best one for the homeowner to follow. I also learned that there are MUCH BETTER ways to go about the entire designing and building process. Unfortunately, no one tells homeowners about those better ways.

That’s why I’m here. I’m all about navigating in a different way because I’ve personally done it on my own projects and seen numerous success stores. Most of it, I learned as an investor who hired builders to build or remodel for me (after having acted as a licensed GC for homeowners for 20 yrs). In the world of investors, there are strategies and methods that work great! Investors typically approach residential construction in a much more empowered way. If you allow me to guide you, then these are strategies and methods that I’ll share. The proven, actionable and relatively easy strategies that work. 

Hope this guidebook and thoughts helps you in your journey!

Julie