To advise you on how better to communicate with your homebuilder, whether the project is an enhancement, a remodel, or a new custom home, we are tempted to begin and end with the same tip. First and last, the biggest difference you can make in the quality of communication and in your sense of satisfaction when the project is completed is to choose a homebuilder who pays attention to you. It is a sense you should feel from the beginning.
Our greatest source of satisfaction in our craft, and the basis for client relationships that go beyond building and extend long after projects are completed, is the interest we have in your own inspiration. The desires, dreams, images, and plans for how your home will be used – how it will look, work, and feel – are unique to you. We cannot discover this inspiration anywhere else than from listening carefully to you.
What You’ll Find Out First
The first thing you can depend on is the experience of references. We will gladly put you in touch with others who have used us. Yes, we are confident that they’ll give us high marks, yet beyond that, it is from folks who have traveled the path before that you may pick up a tip that might not have come up in our conversations together. The information you can gain from a previous Winslow client is a good grounding for a great decision.
Budgeting is the second topic for tips that we advise. The budget we develop with you must be clear, and equally clear should be how the budget will work. During the progress of the project, how often will we check-in together on the status of budget versus expenditures, what documents will we use to make those check-ins clear, and how will we document any changes you may want to authorize as the work moves forward. Our goal: there should never be even a moment of mystery on where we stand with our budget.
Making Tech Our Friend
In addition to planning when we will meet, your preference for how we communicate throughout the course of the project is a key point for discussion and agreement. Whether it is from phone calls, from texts or emails, or even virtual visits to the worksite, our pattern and methods of staying in touch all through the progress of work is part of what we will develop and agree together.
One advantage of technology that we will seek to use, in a way with which you are comfortable, is that it enables us to confirm together what we have understood you to direct. The same advantages give you the power to confirm in detail what our understanding is of your instructions.
The key to making communications technology an advantageous tool is first to determine which modes you are comfortable using, and then to agree on the pattern and timing of how you will stay informed all during the course of work.
The Connection of Design and Communication
We consider design and communication to be vitally related. Bringing your desires and vision into living reality is a product of communication, and we place this priority on it. When your completed home, addition, or enhancement says the right things to you, as you experience it after completion, that is as much a result of the communication we cultivated as of the design itself.
