Have you ever considered building a custom home in Fort Collins? As with anything, building a custom home has pros and cons, and knowing what you want to have at the end is the key to deciding whether to build a custom home or find another route to getting the home you want.

To start, if you are thinking of building a custom home in Fort Collins, you need to think of the process. Even more than the cost, the process of building a custom home is the decider for most people. The cost of a custom home is about the same whether you buy one that is for sale or whether you build from scratch. The other options, of course, are to buy or build a home that isn’t as detail-heavy as a custom home.

A custom home differs from other homes in that you or the builder decides all the details: how many rooms, what size, paint and flooring and cabinetry choices, even how many electrical outlets and where they are placed. If you commission a custom home, those decisions are yours. Sometimes a builder will build a custom home as a speculation—hoping to sell it before it is finished. If you get a custom home this way, how many of the decisions are yours depends on where in the process you come in.

The advantages of building a custom home are pretty obvious: you can decide everything. However, for some people, this very advantage is the difficulty: maybe they don’t have time to oversee every decision or possibly different family members can’t agree on those details.

The other disadvantage of building a custom home is that the process takes longer than buying an existing home or building with someone who gives you limited choices.

Before you choose, take stock of the amount of time you have to invest in the process, and find a builder who can work with your choices and limitations.