Lifestyle or resale?
It's one of the most common questions we hear when designing a custom home: should we build for how we want to live, or for whoever buys it next?
Even with a custom home, many people feel they need certain things just for resale. Ask a real estate agent and you'll hear much the same list. At least four bedrooms. Always a bath. It's worth asking, though: is that list about making the home easy for you to sell, or easy for someone else to sell?
Some of it is true. A home has to support everyday life and the family living in it, and there are some basics every home should have. But it's worth stopping to ask a simple question: am I adding this space for me, or only for resale?
When clients ask us, our answer is usually the same: design the home you'll be most comfortable in.
That answer can mean different things for different people, and that's the point. If you're designing a home that's uniquely yours and getting every dollar back on resale isn't a priority, design it entirely around how you want to live. Big or small, include the features that are important to you. We have plenty of clients who build exactly that way.
If this home is more of a stepping stone, somewhere you might live for four or five years before the next move, you might balance what you love with what the market expects. And if you're a developer building to sell, meeting the market is the whole brief. We design for all of these people. It simply starts with understanding how the home will be used.
So what really protects resale? Room count matters, but it isn't everything. Whether a home has three bedrooms or six, what lasts is a really good layout. A home that's easy to live in, that flows well and responds to its land. A home built with quality products that are known to last. Get those things right and resale tends to look after itself.
Occasionally we've seen clients lean too far the other way. They plan five bedrooms for three people because they think they should. Once they move in, they realise that space could have gone into something they'd actually use, or been left out altogether to save money. It's not common, but it's a good reminder that designing for an imagined buyer can mean missing out on the home you really wanted.
Making it your own isn't complicated. It's understanding what matters most to you: how you want to live, the way you use each space, and the materials, products and details you love. That's what a custom home is for.
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