You just decided to build a new home. First,CONGRATS!

What an exciting event in your life. We know this comes witha lotof decisions. We want to help you make some right away to help the process move along seamlessly for you.

As you begin thinking about what your new home will look like, map out what you can’t live without, what you wish it included, and what you definitely don’t want. This will help youprioritize choices when creating your house building budget. 

Your Wants, Needs, and No Ways … 

Let’s start by answering some basic questions:

• Do you need a flat yard or are hills acceptable?
• How big do you want your lot to be?
• What do you want your Home floor plan to look like?
• Do you need or enjoy any outdoor living spaces?
• How big should the garage be?
• How many bedrooms and bathrooms do you need?
• Are there any specific materials or features you’d like to incorporate?

When creating your budget, focus on your home design's structural necessities (size, stories, etc.) first. Whatever is left in your budget can be put toward design features and upgrades like a gourmet kitchen with an island or peaceful sunroom addition. We often envision the fun stuff like a butcher-block counter and overlook the much-more-important-to-daily-life things like how many bathrooms we actually need.

The bedrooms, bathrooms, and square feet can set the baseline for your budget. So now let’s get a little more specific, breaking down rooms that are usually the most expensive to customize when building your Berks Home floor plan:

• Do you want a space where you can eat in your kitchen? (This answer is yes if you don't plan on having a dining room.)
• Are there any appliances that are more important to you than others?
• Which features of a kitchen are an absolute necessity to you? (Examples: soft-close drawers, an island, gas stove, etc.)

• Do you need a special size toilet? (ADA accessible or one for someone over 6 feet)
• Will you want a bathtub in more than one room?
• Will you need a shower head attachment that removes from the wall? (This is great if you have small kids or pets.)

You don't need to answer every single question we've asked you here. But it might be a good idea to take out a piece of paper (or create a document in Excel if you are FANCY) and make three columns when it comes to figuring out your Berks Homes floor plan for your new home:

Want // Need // Absolutely Not(I don't care how much money it saves me we are not doing this)

Then as you consider some of the questions above, you'll discover some things you have strong feelings about. This list allows you to ask specific questions when picking out your options. Like if you build a house with Berks Homes, you'll have an appointment with our Selection Gallery experts to pick out every detail of your home. That becomes much less overwhelming and way more fun when you have this outline.