How to Create a Home Renovation Budget Without Guessing

All right, everybody, Bill Reid here, about to tackle one of the biggest questions of the century, I believe, in residential new home or remodel projects, and that is the budget question. Now, over the 35 years I've been coordinating the design and construction of residential home projects for people, the budget question is something that needs to be addressed real early.

In the process between a designer and a customer or a contractor and a customer or both. And when that question arises, a lot of homeowners just randomly come up with a number. Some of them don't even understand really where that number comes from. It's just a number that they either feel comfortable with, that they've heard other people have spent on projects. Maybe it's the amount of money that they have available to them.

There's a disconnect between the dreams and ideas of their project and what the real value costs. And it's amazing how many people go down a really long path with architects and designers and contractors, only to come to find out that they're not even close to what they expected to spend. Part of this is because homeowners don't — you, the homeowner, don't understand what you need to know. Don't understand what things cost, depend heavily on the internet and friends and colleagues. A lot of people join Facebook groups and start listening to all the gibberish that goes on those groups about costs and design and everything. And my objective today is to try to get a little more reign in on that for you so that you can tap into your finances as efficiently as possible and mirror and connect your dreams and visions and ideas of your project with a real budget as early as possible.

It's almost an impossible question to answer because you haven't designed anything yet. You haven't specified anything yet, yet people ask day in and day out, okay, I want to build a 3,000 square foot home. How much is it going to cost? That question gets posed to architects and designers. And that question gets answered so many different ways by professionals. And it's because it can range a lot. It depends on the quality, the location, the complexity of the home that you want. And it goes on and on and on. It's a very personal business. It's a very personal journey.

So that's what we're going to try to do. Now, if you listen to my previous episode, there's two parts in my mind and working with clients that form a budget. And remember, this is not a construction estimate. This is just you getting your head right on how much you want to invest in the project, in your property. I spoke about the investment goal side, trying to disconnect your mind from all of the emotional attachments to the parcel that you want to buy or the pictures of the homes on the internet that you love and come at it from an investment perspective.

Now what we're going to try to do is balance that with a budget. And a budget is one more step past the investment goal so that you can start to home in and come up with some valuations that you can share with prospective designers, architects, contractors, so they can lead you down the right path. So that's the idea today. There's some methods that you can use to come up with a valuation for a project. And there's going to be some variables that you will actually have to go out and do a little bit of research on your own in the particular marketplace you're in. But what I'm going to try to do is give you some ideas on how to go about.

And I'm going to try to come at you as simple as possible so that you can at least get something down on paper, something in a spreadsheet that you can analyze and keep picking away at. Now eventually, like I've mentioned in previous episodes, I'm creating a tool that's going to do a lot of this for you. But I just felt compelled to start getting this information out there so that you can start thinking about it on your own. I know that a lot of people think about a project months, years even, before they start to embark on it. And that's also why I wrote the book, The Awakened Homeowner. A lot of this information is in the book. And this is my opportunity to elaborate on it all so that we can really get you best positioned.

So the budgeting methods, one was setting the investment goal. And the second one is evaluating a construction budget. I want you to be thinking about it this way. Think about two teeter-totters, if you know what that is, where you're balancing a plane on a central point. And we're going to, once we get through the budget exercise, you're going to then go back and you're going to do two balancing acts. You're going to balance your dreams and all those fancy ideas that you love and want, and the overall scope that you want with your budget. And you're going to look at how balanced that is. Are you getting everything that you want? Are there modifications or changes that you need to make?

And then you're going to balance your budget with your investment. So if you came up with a $500,000 investment goal — in other words, that's a fancy name for guess. A lot of people just guess how much they want to spend. They have very little data to support their guess. And they get that stuck in their mind and then they go at it hard on a project, only to come to find out that it's a waste of their time. So I've turned it into an investment goal.

So now you're going to take that flat out guess or some delusional information that a builder on the other side of town gave you about how much he's building this particular home for. And you're going to dig into it from an investment side. And I went through that in the last episode, but you're going to balance that with your budget. So if you set your investment goal at $500,000 and you go through this budgeting exercise we're about to do, and you come up with $750,000, then you know that there's got to be some changes that have to be made. There's a lot of different changes that you can make, not necessarily just to your scope of work or your dreams and visions and ideas, but there's going to be changes that may have to be made.

Now, if you find out that you're really close to your original guesstimate slash investment goal, then at least you know you're in the ballpark. So again, what we're trying to do is balance your budget with your dreams and balance your budget with your investment goal. And that's the idea here.

Now, you as a homeowner and your own finances can determine how important the investment side of things is. You may say I set an investment goal at $500,000 because after I looked around at the neighborhood, it doesn't make any sense to invest any more in that. But then some people will say, well, you know what, this is my forever home. I'm getting ready to retire. I have all this money in the bank or whatever. And I just want what I want. So you yourself are going to have to make that decision. But at least you have some data points to go off of.

So let's dig in and talk about how you can do this. Right now, what we'll do is we'll use a new home as our baseline, but we will talk about remodeling because remodeling can be a lot more difficult to figure out than new home construction. Now, what you want to do is you want to go back and look at your design statement that we've already talked about, I believe, in the previous episodes. But a design statement is your declaration of what you want, how you envision your home, how you envision living in your home, and have this narrative, this story that you'll eventually share with your design team so that they can get a sense of what you want. So keep that in mind. And this is really helpful in the world of remodeling as well.

Because you may want to have a new master suite, but that's going to impact probably the rest of your home or portions of the rest of your home. So creating that design statement, narrative story is really helpful for yourself, but also for your design team when the time comes to convey your dreams and visions and ideas and then eventually your budget.

So what you can do is you can look at analyzing your project by square foot. Now, I know that there's a lot of controversy out there about this and how it can really range a lot. And it can, but there's really no other way unless you have a complete set of design and plans to be able to analyze actual costs of components, of materials, of finishes. We're not there yet. We're going to get there way down the path here and do what's called an actual construction estimate. Remember, we're just doing a budget. Just trying to get some parameter here built in so that you can have something much better than guesses, as I keep saying over and over again. I'm sorry about that.

So we're going to look at the new square footage. Let's talk about square footage. When you analyze the construction costs of a project, the best way to do it is to align it with the way real estate is valued in the marketplace. For example, if you were thinking about a 3,000 square foot home, what that means is that's 3,000 square feet of living area. Living area, think about it as conditioned space. Think about it as heated and cooled space. This is the actual bedrooms and bathrooms and kitchen and living room, the areas that you live in. So when you go to look for homes online, you see a 3,000 square foot home, that's what that means.

Then you look at the market valuation price. Let's say it's $1.5 million. So that is $500 per square foot, right? $500 per square foot is the per square foot market price of that home. This is how a lot of valuation is done in real estate. There's other subjective factors that come into play to influence that number — location, orientation, features, et cetera. We're not going to go there right now. We're just talking about per square foot price.

So the first thing you're going to want to do is look at how many new square feet you want to build. So let's just for this today, let's just talk about 3,000 square feet. Then you're going to also want to analyze or document or write down in your spreadsheet how many square feet you want for your garage structure, any structure that's attached to the building that is non-conditioned. And it's usually a garage. The next thing you're going to want to do, the next line item, is if you're going to want a basement and if you want a finished basement or an unfinished basement. And that is the baseline of what we're going to analyze cost on a cost per square foot basis.

So new square footage — in my book I call it NSF. New square footage. That's what it's all about, is the living area of your home. Now, in a remodel project, this is why it gets more complicated. In a remodel project, you have new square footage. Maybe you might be adding on to your home. Let's just for our example, let's say you're adding a new primary bedroom and bathroom on the back of the home. And maybe that's 500 square feet. So your new square footage is 500 square feet. And then your existing square footage, ESF, I call it, so NSF and ESF, is the amount of square footage that is impacted by your project.

So when people do remodel projects, it's not usually clear cut that you're tacking something onto the back of your home and nothing gets touched. When you go to add a new bedroom or expansion or second floor addition, almost always you're going to impact the existing structure one way or another. Whether you have to tear out a bedroom and create a hallway to get to the new master suite or shrink down a bedroom or remove a bathroom and move it to another location so you can get to this new master suite. Or if you're adding a second floor, let's say you have a 1,500 square foot home and you want to add 750 square feet on top of it, you are going to affect the ground floor by structural modifications, retrofitting, and that sometimes triggers new kitchens and baths and new drywall and new flooring, so on and so on.

So you're going to look at your new square footage and you're going to look at your existing square footage. And you're going to factor a per square foot price to each of those. So there's three components total when budgeting a project. There's the new square footage, there's the existing square footage, and the last one is called scope of work.

Now, the term scope of work is used universally throughout the world of construction and a lot of industries. A scope of work is a definition of the work that you would like performed. Now it's pretty clear that you want to have the work performed of the 500 square foot new addition. And it's even clearer now that you've gone through some of the design steps, that you're going to need a new bathroom on the existing home and new flooring and new drywall and new kitchen or whatever you come up with to specify for the existing square footage. So new square footage, existing square footage.

The scope of work are the things that are also required or that you desire on a project that aren't necessarily directly attached to the new square footage or the existing square footage, but often overlap both. Here's an example. Because you're adding a 500 square foot addition on the back of the home, that's going to require a significant amount of roof framing and tie into the existing roof structure of the home, which may lead to replacing the entire roof on the house. So you're not putting a roof on a 500 square foot building now. Now you're putting a roof on a 2,000 square foot building if it's a 1,500 square foot existing home and a 500 square foot addition.

So this is something that people miss a lot. They don't realize what I call the impact of a remodel project. So there's a lot of variables that go into a remodel project that I'm just going to hit on today that can affect your project and your budget. These are why people go over budget. When people say, yeah, I just blew my budget. Why? Why did you blow your budget? Was it because it was unrealistic to begin with? Was it based on no data? Did you consult with anybody to understand the impact of your project so that you could include the new roof? You could include the new HVAC system because now you've increased your building by 33%.

And therefore the existing forced air furnace is no longer adequate to serve the building. The plumbing needs to be upgraded. The fact that you're moving a whole bathroom, I didn't realize I had to move the bathroom. I didn't think about that six months ago when I came up with the budget. So the scope of work element is really important. And we're going to get into this later in the design process. But when you start talking with an architect, an interior designer or a contractor, these are some of the questions you're going to want to ask.

I see you want this, I would love to have this addition, but how is that going to impact my existing home? Are there things that are going to cost me money that I'm not thinking of? Those are the general questions a homeowner who doesn't know what they don't know can ask. What other costs am I going to get hit with because I want to add on this bedroom or bathroom? So that's a big one.

And so we've got new construction — sorry, new square footage, existing square footage, scope of work. NSF, ESF, and SOW, I call it. Those are the things you're going to want to think of. Some of the things that come up on both new construction and remodels that can really throw you for a loop is how about landscaping? Did anybody think of that when they were doing their budget for their new home? Does anybody realize that you have to do landscaping based on the HOA that you're living in. I'm just using hypotheticals right now. How much landscaping do you want to do?

Windows. If you're doing a remodel project and you put new windows in the new addition, do you think you want to match them to the rest of the house? Same thing applies with doors and plumbing, electrical and lighting. If you're going to be putting a 500 square foot addition on and adding a bunch of electrical requirements for new bathrooms and whatever else you might be requiring, is your electrical service panel adequate? Is the electrical service coming to the home adequate? Things like that. So roofing I mentioned. These are just a few examples of things that you're going to want to engage with your architect on so that you can assemble a budget.

So that's where we're at right now. We've got the square footage, we've got the scope of work. Another thing that people tend to forget sometimes when they're thinking about budget on their own is design costs. It costs money to get a set of plans drafted and designed and engineered by an architect or a residential designer. And I'll be talking about that. What's the difference between those two? Do I need an interior designer to help me pick out all the materials? Does my architect do that for me? Does my residential designer do that for me? Do I need another designer to help me? Do I want to do it myself? These elements cost money. One way or another, they cost money. And one of the ways you can really start to get a grip on the budget is architectural fees can range anywhere from 6% to 12%, maybe even more on bigger, more complex projects of the construction cost.

So if you have a $500,000 project, you may spend $30,000 on architectural plans. Now people start to freak out when I say that because they go online, they say, look, I can buy a whole set of home plans for $2,000. That might be right. You can see that you can buy architectural plans, and I use that term lightly, architectural plans online for $2,000. But when you start reading the fine print, you realize that you can't take those plans, print them out, and then take them to your city to get a permit. Not even close.

What you need to do is those are basically really good conceptual plans, which look, they're not bad and they can be of value, but you need to then take those to an architect and say, okay, here's what I want, but I really want to do this and I want to have a bigger garage and I want to modify the master bathroom or the primary bathroom. And all of a sudden, you're back into designing the project.

Now, if you're able to just take literally not touch that set of plans, you're still not there yet. Because that set of plans has to be engineered for your local jurisdiction where you're living, where the home's going to be built. What does that mean? That means hiring the appropriate consultants to do that. What does that mean? The first one I can think of is a structural engineer on the project. These are the people that design the bones of your home. These are the people that instruct your contractor what and how to build your home structurally.

Sometimes structural engineering fees can cost more than the architectural fees. I've seen it. That depends on the complexity of the project. Who's going to design the cardiovascular system of the home? Who's going to design the HVAC system, the heating ventilation air conditioning system? Who's going to design the electrical and lighting design? Who's going to design the interior design and specify all of the materials, the sources of the materials, the cost of the materials, and make sure that they're ordered on time, ordered correctly.

So architectural fees, design fees in general can throw you off. Now it depends on your particular situation. Some people have a lot of experience and they can tackle some of these things themselves, like the interior design aspect. But a lot of people don't have the experience. And they think going into these home plans that they get excited and they buy the plans and realize that's 25% of what it's going to cost, maybe even less, of what a final detailed set of plans are suitable to send into your planning and building departments to obtain a building permit, to deliver to a general contractor to obtain accurate costs.

This is another part of budgeting that is absolutely crucial. It can actually end up representing, I would say, on average, between 10 and 20% of the cost of your budget. Now the 20% thing gets a little bit into more complex, very upscale custom homes, but not always. So knowing this going in is going to really help you establish an accurate budget. So we have a construction budget. We have the design budget. And one of the other elements is the permit fees. So these things cost money. And it's sometimes a lot of money.

So you're going to want to understand that. That's not too difficult to understand when you go down to your building department or even look online. Some of them show you how to calculate the anticipated cost for a 3,000 square foot home. So those are the components of a budget that need to be analyzed. And the big question is: how much per square foot is this going to cost?

Okay, great. I got my square foot figured out, 3,000 square foot. Whoopee. Is it $100 a foot? Is it $700 a foot? Pretty big range there. And this is where everybody gets lost. Like I mentioned earlier, there's some online tools out there that are trying to do this. And I'm trying to do it too. And what I've done is I've gone back and looked at history over 30 years of how much it costs per square foot to build a home and to remodel a home. I've done a lot of very intense large-scale remodels and renovations in Northern California in the Silicon Valley area for a lot of high-tech people that are very detail-oriented people. I love them. They made me into a detail freak. And my mindset comes from reality as opposed to the delusions out there.

Now, that's all still fun and games. The fact that I figured out what is a good average price per square foot. But really, this is where you have to do your own work. And I want you to be careful here because I don't want you to latch on to the number you finally found that works for you, regardless. Again, I keep mentioning these Facebook groups, but these people out there, there's some good ones too out there. There's actually some really good ones on social media and Instagram. And I've even chimed in on a few and said, good job, because this is going to help people not screw up and get themselves into deep water.

But for the most part, there's really low ball numbers out there. I'm coming at you from the perspective of you are going to be hiring a design team. You're going to be hiring a general contractor. Some people call them builders to handle the whole project. You can hire them independently, or you can hire what's called a design build company. That's all one entity that is designing and building your project. However you handle it, we're going to go into that someday soon too. But that's how I'm coming at it from the valuations that I come up with on a per square foot basis.

Now, people that want to act as an owner builder, meaning they are the builder, they're going to do some hands-on work themselves, they're going to micromanage every aspect of the project and do subcontracting themselves, hire subcontractors themselves. Theoretically you can save money doing that. I'm not convinced after all these years that you honestly save that much money and especially time and especially quality. That'll be for another day.

So I've come up with some ranges and how I do it is I look at quality level. And I don't look at quality level meaning low, medium, high. I look at it from life journey. Where are you at? Where are you at in your life? Is this your first time home that you're planning to renovate and then you see yourself moving on five years later to the next one and start working your way up? Are you not sure? You've been in the home 10, 15 years. You're not sure, but you still want quality, but you don't want to go overboard. Or is this your forever home? Is this it? You finally got there and you're going to build your new custom home.

And I will post some valuations that I think are reasonable on a blog post for you to look at and talk a little bit more about it there. And I'll probably write that up right around the same time that this podcast. But I'm just going to touch on them anyway, just for fun, since we're talking about it. So if you're looking at a new home, new custom home. And we're talking about a construction cost, not the other elements I talked about, such as the design fees and permits. We'll go with the, I call it good, better, best.

Instead of low, medium, high, you could end up spending $450 to $600 per square foot all in, not including the cost of the land, because there's so many different variables there to build a really decent quality custom home. Now that's not a high-end home. That one's going to get you from above $600 all the way up to $1,000 per square foot. I know you're freaking out right now, but $1,000 a square foot starts getting you into upper end materials, custom design, a lot of high end features. I hate to say it, but that's not the end. You can spend even more for real high end work. And again, like I mentioned earlier, this is a really personal business, personal choices.

So you can see the low end — the low end, I'm thinking this is my first project. I want to just get something good. You might spend anywhere from $315 to $385. Who knows? This gives you a range of what I'm talking about. Now, what you need to do, once you've gone through your investment goal exercise, and you've even done some budgeting, very simple spreadsheet, or even on a piece of paper, 3,000 square foot home. Okay, Bill says I better budget about $500 a square foot. That's $1.5 million. Now, what you need to do is you need to pound the pavement a little bit, depending on your risk tolerance.

If you think that's close enough, I could go up or down 20% or whatever. I'm good, then you can start getting into working with architects and designers. But what I recommend you do is engage with some architects. You can cover two things here. You can start researching for architects and designers and builders, and you can start asking these questions based on your inspirations and your ideas that we've already talked about, your investment goal. If your investment goal was a million, let's say, or you're at $1.5 million, you're like, what do I do? You start talking and asking questions to architects and designers.

Now what I have to say here is contractors and builders tend to have a little bit better grip on the pricing of building a home than architects and designers. That's my opinion. And I've been on both sides for a long time. And the best situation is when you have the same team that are designing and building the project. Because they're talking back and forth, they have a good sense, and they've done some valuation studies of past projects.

Another good way to do it is when you start interviewing architects and designers, and you've conveyed your ideas, what you want, you can ask them, have there been any recent projects that you've done that have been completed? Do you know what the valuation, the construction cost was for those projects? Or would I be able to talk to the contractor that built those projects for you? And then you will be able to interview them as well. And then you can start talking about cost and budget.

It's almost always the case that people don't get to hear what they want to hear. Very rarely do homeowners say, is that all? I thought it was going to be a lot more. Never happens. And these are the things that you can do. If you're in an urban or suburban neighborhood or even a semi-rural neighborhood, and there's projects going on, doesn't hurt to just stop in and say hi to the contractor, look for the signs and the architect, and that's a good way to find relevant information in your area to validate this budget number you're coming up with.

You're not going to be done there, and we're going to talk about that during the design process, but that is what we're talking about today is going beyond the investment goal now, coming up with a budget beyond guesses and delusions, doing a little bit of just a little bit of work on your own to figure out what your neighborhood, what your neighbors are spending per square foot, what contractors are charging per square foot. Use a tool that, use a spreadsheet tool that, you know, new square footage, existing square footage, make a list of the scope of work that you want beyond just simple calculations.

For example, you may want an accessory dwelling unit. You may want a shop or a barn or garage, detached garage. Any of the things that you think you want beyond your living area and your attached garage structure, list that down and then do a little bit of work on your own to figure out what you think people are spending per square foot. I'm hoping I'm giving you enough information to be able to get into such a better place than where people get screwed over, frankly.

I was on a Facebook group a few days ago and some Instagram things. And there's people that are on there that are boasting about $200 a square foot to build a new home. And then when you see the people asking questions, what does that include? What didn't that include? What quality level? And when you see some of the pictures that get posted and you start to pay attention to some of the answers, you'll start to get a sense. Some of the answers were that didn't include any of the land. And I did a lot of the work myself. Some people were boasting about how much they spent. I did a lot of the work myself. I acted as my own general contractor. My brother-in-law did the electrical.

These are people that are trying to do it on the cheap or trying to maximize their dollar. I don't blame them. And if that's you, great. If you're going to really dive in deep, all the more power to you. And I'd love to hear your stories, your true stories, what you really spent, including everything, the architectural fees, all the materials, everything that went into the project. I would love to hear it because the more data I can gather. But my niche has always been remodel and new construction projects, full service.

And some of the guys out there, the builders that might be listening to this saying $500 a square foot. Some of them might even be thinking I'm crazy. I might be. But it's a hell of a lot better than some of these other things that are getting said all over the place.

So let's recap, because I'm getting a little windy here. This has been the discovery series of The Awakened Homeowner podcast. Everything that you do right before you start engaging with any designers. We went through those early and I welcome you to go back and look through all that because what we're doing here is we are establishing a foundation of expectations. Once we set realistic expectations that have been thought through, you are not going to be one of those victims. When somebody's screaming and yelling at each other across cubicles about how their remodel hell is going on, you can walk right by with a little grin on your face because you know you got it together. And you got your project.

So let's review. When you are creating a budget for a remodel project, you're going to enter the data. In a case of a remodel, you're going to enter the data of the existing square footage of your home that is going to get affected. Take a guess. So if it's a 1,500 square foot home, okay, the back end of the house is going to get affected. Put 500, 750 in whatever. Enter the new square footage of your addition, or just simply enter the new square footage of the living area of your new home. Budget other special items that might come into play. That was that scope of work element I was talking about. Select the square footage values. I talked about some. I'm going to post something here about this. Be realistic. Do a little bit of research on your own. Include the cost of the design and permits. Put a provision in there for that. Determine a budget range.

So you may come up with $1.3 to $1.6 million for a budget. What is a budget again? It's not an estimate. It's a tool for you to compare to your investment goal. That's it. So you should even pick up the phone and call. If you thought you were going to spend $500,000 and it's $1.5 million, you got a problem. Even if you start hacking away at the per square foot price and I'll get my brother-in-law to design it, do this myself. You're just on the wrong path. But if you're getting closer and you feel like you can manipulate the numbers and the scope of work and your desires and the compromises, now you're in the driver's seat. Now you're able to continue on and then start asking relevant questions.

So lastly, let's do a recap of the next steps that you should do in this whole discovery stage, because this is the end of the discovery stage. So take some time to think through your goals and write them down. Go back to some of those earlier podcasts. Be aware of the outside forces that can totally derail you. That was my episode on delusions. There's some cool little stories in there. I even talk about some square footage stuff in there. So be aware of those delusions and don't let them screw you over.

Understand the value of your property today and when your project is complete. And that was establishing, part of the process of establishing an investment goal. And then you decide and prioritize how important that really is. That allows you to make an informed decision about how much you want to invest, and then you can begin balancing that with your budget and your dreams. Share all these goals with your design team. It's important that they know that you've taken these steps. One of the first things, and I'm just going to hit hard on this, one of the first things a designer thinks about when you call them up is you are excited about your project. You have all these things you want to do. They want to understand if you know what reality is when it comes to budget before they do anything because it is how they get motivated or not.

And if you are close to balancing your investment and your construction budget, good ones will help you get there. Because again, like I said, very rarely do people say that's all it costs. Very rarely. The good ones will help you get there. But they're going to ask you what your budget is. And you shouldn't go on the defensive there. You should share the exercises that you've gone through. And that equals that little playing field. You're not buying a car. It's not a car salesman asking you how much you got, that stuff. This is a solution. This is a solution provider, service provider. It's a consultative sale, whatever you want to call it.

These people are here. You might spend years with these people, and you might spend months or even a year or maybe even longer with these people helping you get there. So empower them with your budget. Now, that's a little bit easier said than done because some people don't know what their budget is. They don't understand, they want to understand the value of certain components of their project. That's great. And if you know that going in, tell them. Tell them, look, this is my forever home. I ran through some numbers myself based on a 3,000 square foot home. I think I want to spend $1.5 million, but if you come up with some really cool stuff and I love it, I might bump it more.

You might say, this probably isn't my forever home. I'm really tapped out at about a million and I need help getting there. And this is what I would love to have, but I'm willing to make those compromises and those revisions to my project to get me there. The worst thing you can do is not share your budget or share an unrealistic budget or not address the budget early on. It's the worst thing you can do. And even if the architects don't ask you or the designers or contractors don't ask you, bring it up. Let them know. Because this is where you're going to get reality.

And if they say, wow, that's going to be tough to get there, really tough, then the next question is, wow, really? Can you show me a project that you think would be in my budget that you've designed? Or could you show me a project that's similar to mine and how much it cost? So you can make informed decisions. The best part about all of this is you're setting expectations for you and you're setting expectations for your contractor, your architects, designers. They know right out of the shoot.

Unfortunately, it's not over yet. And when we get into the world of design, which is where I'm about to go in the next many episodes, we're going to talk about how you manage this budget process during the design. You can't forget about it once you start designing. Guess what? Energy starts flowing. Ideas start getting thrown at you that you love. Excitement comes out. And all of a sudden, everybody wakes up one day and says, wait a minute. Can I afford this? Do I want — it may not even be can I afford it? Do I want to invest in this? Can we stop? Can we pause? I'm going to get into a lot of that.

That was my stab at the budget. And it's not going to be the end, but I wanted to get that into your head, start thinking about it. And I can really help you with this too. So if you're a serious homeowner that's really considering a project, maybe you haven't even purchased a lot yet, which is not a bad idea, you can reach out to me and I can help consult with you just on an hourly basis or something, just to begin with, and we can work together on it. You can share your dreams and ideas. I really can't wait to get my new application out called BuildQuest, because you're going to be able to do all of this online. You're going to be able to save your project summary. You're going to be able to reach out to me or your local architects that we help you find. And you're going to be able to do, you won't have to think as much. How about that?

That's what I have for you today. My name is Bill Reid, and I am the author of the book, The Awakened Homeowner, and the host of The Awakened Homeowner. It's all me. Thanks for joining, and I'll see you next time.