My name is Jason Barnett. I am a lead designer with My Plan Store. For years, customers have asked about what our cost is and it has always bothered me because they aren’t asking for apples-to-apples costs. Most home design companies are trying to sell a service and just want to do a house plan with only a simple revision or two.
Over the last 25 years of designing homes for clients, I have developed a proven system. The house plan phase of getting a custom home built is the most important step in preparing to build. It should be taken very seriously. I believe that every customer should be ready for 3 very important meetings about their house plans.
The first meeting is where you sit down and meet with a design professional and you go over the full scope of what you want, what you have to have, what you can afford and what are the limitations of your property. In this design meeting, you will determine the number of rooms, connectivity between rooms, privacy, and general house flow. This process should be done with someone you can relate to and trust. This professional advisor should be able to make suggestions but be more interested in bringing your ideas to life than theirs.
The second big meeting is when you have the house layout approved and you start working on elevations. The exterior of your new home should have good balance, focal points, Change in materials for interest, and most importantly of all, a Roof system that will work. Roofs can be tricky and you want a design team that has experience with your type of construction and roofs.
Final Design Review and Pre-Construction Meeting. This meeting can happen with an experienced builder and customer, but is better if it is a team meeting with the designer as well. This typically happens after the house plans have made it to a bid set or a bank set as we call it. The builder should have shown the plan to his subcontractors and have a ballpark price for moving forward. The builder should have comments back from the different subcontractors, like the framer and his concerns, or the cabinet maker and the layouts involving cabinets, and so on.
When you meet after having met with the subs and having numbers, your design/construction team can re-view notes and make final adjustments to your plan before starting construction. All this is to say, that comparing the price of a company that is set to be a part of your design process and a consultation member of the construction process is not comparing apples to apples. Most drafters are commissioned to draw what you ask with very little input. Designing a home is a process and should be done using a professional team.