Who comes first? The architect or the builder?

When you have decided to either build a custom home or add some square footage with an addition to your existing property, it’s a big life-changing moment for you and your family. Your home is your safe space, a place where you host friends and family, and create memories. It’s where you come back from a tough day at work and see your family. Making this investment into your home doesn’t happen often and will be a large time and money commitment. Just like many of life’s biggest decisions, it’s best to put your trust in local experts who do this sort of work every day and have the relationships to ensure that everything you dream of is done with the utmost quality. When planning your project, you’ll need to know how it will layout, what is included in the scope of work, and how much all of this will cost. Asking whom to hire first is like asking the age-old question of, “Which came first? The chicken or the egg?”

Hiring an architect initially will answer the first two questions of how the house will be laid out and what will be included in the scope of work. The third question regarding cost, will most likely be answered with a prediction and a range based on square footage, an unreliable metric that I will expand on in a future post (link here). I have been involved in planning meetings before and have heard many more stories about families planning their dream build only to later find out that it’s beyond their budget and end up cancelling plans all together after spending their hard earned time and money.

Hiring a builder initially will answer the last two questions of what will be included in the scope of work and how much all of this may cost, but it entirely depends on what the layout of the house will be and how it will be constructed. I can come up with pricing based on previous projects, but I am putting my subcontractors in a tough spot to ask them for costs when there are no finalized plans and many are hesitant to provide a price on something so unknown.

So what is the answer? How can you ensure your home is built to your standards of quality and budget in the smoothest way possible? By picking your team early in the process and not just choose one path. When I’m first call to be brought into a project, I always recommend my clients to interview at least three architects and three interior designers as well. I also believe you should interview three builders (as long as we at Seacrest Development are one of them ☺️). By interviewing those nine professionals, you should have most of your questions answered about the building process and have a good sense of whom to trust during this lengthy but fun process of building your dream home. By hiring both the architect and the builder at the same time (and yes, I’m including an interior designer as an integral part of the team as well) you’ll be able to have a clear vision throughout the process of what’s the best way forward to bring your dream home into reality.