Building your home is one of the single biggest investments you will make. Yet few who have built a home pay what they expected to or should have, or remember it as a hassle free experience. In fact the building process is often characterised by conflict between the homeowner and builder, usually over extra costs, payments, time delays or poor quality workmanship. Thus building also becomes one of the biggest financial and legal risks you will be exposed to! So what is the solution?

Build Aid Consulting exists to ensure that building your dream home will be all that you hoped it would be – within budget, to agreed standards and on-time. We do this by providing you with an accurate “Building Costs Analysis”, that ensures you know what the costs of building your home will be, before you start building.

About Builders Quotes

Builder’s quotes vary considerably, as most use a different price per square metre (m2) to calculate their cost to build.

Unfortunately this common method of establishing building costs is seriously flawed and can result in either the builder or the home owner loosing money as the following simple analogy demonstrates:

A Toyota and a Ferrari are exactly the same size in m2, and have the same features: they both have four wheels, a windscreen, steering wheel, headlights etc. Should they both be the same price?

Seriously though, just the shape of a house alone can affect the price drastically.

Take for example two houses both 100m2:

One house measures 10x10m (square), the other 25x4m (rectangle), both are exactly 100m2 but, the walls of the square are 40m long and the walls on the rectangle are 58m long.

This is an extra 18m of walling, almost 50% difference. This inaccuracy alone could cost you an extra R40, 000.00.

Some other factors that are not taken into account in the m2 method are; Roof type, the Height of walls

We want to stress – never rely on the square metre (m2) system of pricing, it invites distress and possible disaster.

Choose the Right Builder at the Right contract price

Once you have your plans, the key to a successful project is selecting the right quote from the various Building Contractors who tender for your work, and consequently the right builder of your home. But how do you choose between the various quotes you receive, how do ensure you don’t overpay? In other words, which quote is both accurate and fair?

This problem is common to many who desire to build their own home. Most of us tend to take the lower quote and often end up with the builder requesting more money, an unfinished project and a fight with the builder which may lead to litigation.

Build Aid’s Building Costs Analysis will help you establish the correct contract price, by providing a “benchmark” against which you can assess the quotes you receive.