Home Planning Guide Step 4: Design Your Home

So you’re finally ready to design your home. Congratulations! This is a big step, and it deserves careful consideration. After all, your home is where you’ll make memories, build a life, and spend most of your waking hours. At the same time, this is the fun part where you get to see your ideas put on paper, taking you one step closer to your home.

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Let’s Design Together

Building for Your Future

Our design process is a thorough and personalized journey. Throughout it, we’ll encourage you to envision your home to fit within your needs, not only for today’s necessities but also for tomorrow’s uncertainties.

Our team of HPM Home Planning Consultants will start by gathering baseline information, such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and how people live in your current dwelling. We will ask questions about the current use of space so we can better understand how you’ll want to use your new space. This means we’ll get to know you and your family! Is there room to expand if kūpuna move in, or will you transition bedrooms to other purposes when kids move out? Will you want to build home additions in the future? We ask these important questions that have long-term ramifications to ensure what you build now will serve your needs for life.

Our Advice: Go at Your Own Pace

Navigating life while building is uncharted territory until you go through it, and designing an entire home might seem like an overwhelming task. Our advice is to take it at your own pace and don’t try to do everything at once. It can be easy to go down a rabbit hole of design possibilities! It’s okay to not have everything figured out yet and to make mistakes along the way. With our help, the whole experience will be greatly streamlined.

What Does Designing & Building a Home Cost?

HPM Homes: The Whole Package

We’ll work with you to make any necessary changes to the structure of the home and break down the drafting process into phases with clear fee schedules. Our home planning fee includes a full material take-off, an HPM Home Planning Consultant who will walk you through all the steps from start to finish, and any additional fees for drafting, architectural, and septic services. We’ll also gather quotes for all building steps and review the drawings and plans with our internal team once they are approved.

Additionally, we’ll consider your land and any unique features it may have, such as flood zones, high wind zones, or potential topography concerns. Your Home Planning Consultant is prepared to give you advice on how to navigate through these things to get your project moving forward. Every project is unique, and our team takes into account the specific needs and budget of each customer to create the ideal home design.

In 2023 we refreshed our floor plans based on feedback we’ve received from our customers on what they’d like to see. However, you are welcome to come up with additional ideas and products to incorporate beyond what our plans include, and we will advise you on the best pathway forward.

Consider All Costs

As you begin designing your home, keep the big picture in mind. While it’s natural to get excited about the materials and finishes, it’s equally important to consider the other costs involved in the project. Besides material costs, other fees not included in the package home plan, such as labor costs and utilities, can add up quickly.

To help you avoid overlooking anything, we provide a budget builder worksheet. Our HPM Home Planning Consultants will go over our package home options with you and provide estimates for all of the other costs that you need to consider. Also, keep in mind that costs can change over time, and the only prices you’ll be able to lock in are those included in the HPM home package.

Working Within Your Budget

The last thing we want is to see our clients unable to build the homes they want, which is why initial budget planning is so vital to the overall process. As a baseline, compare prices per square foot on your island. If there are any issues with your land, that can affect the cost of building a house on it. Similarly, research the local real estate market to gain an idea of what your budget can build for you.

We’ll break down our HPM home packages by the cost of materials and provide realistic expectations of what will fit your budget to ultimately guide you toward what you can feasibly build for your capital. For example, instead of looking for a certain-sized house, we may suggest a smaller initial footprint with the possibility for expansion later. Especially when interest rates are higher, some people may not be able to afford the home they were planning for. More than anything, we want to get local families into homes designed for their needs and ensure our kama‘aina can stay in Hawai‘i. Sometimes, the home built doesn’t have to be the be-all, end-all so long as the door is left open for future growth (and potential!).

By taking the time to plan ahead and consider all of the costs involved, you can avoid surprises down the road. Our HPM Home Planning Consultants are here to help you every step of the way and ensure that you have a successful and stress-free home-building experience.

Get to Know Our HPM Home Planning Consultants

Our HPM Home Planning Consultants have the practical experience to stay on top of changes that come with the permitting process. The reality of this unpredictable industry is you need to be able to think on your feet, and your training comes on the job. Some of our team members have been doing this for over 20 years, and even now, we still need to dive headfirst into the details to find the best options for each client. With new information and protocols changing often, we are continuously learning and asking questions to stay at the top of our game.

We help clients navigate the architectural review process and find the right layout, and we bring a wealth of home design expertise. Our goal from the beginning is to promote transparency and provide knowledge so our clients understand the process and can make informed decisions about all the steps and fees involved. We’ll also gather quotes for materials so you don’t have to do any of the heavy calculating on your own.

Building a home from the ground up can seem daunting, especially when it comes to planning and design. One big benefit of opting for an HPM Home is it comes with a ready-made floor plan: A standard plan is complete with all of the details figured out for you. If extra structural engineering is required, an HPM Home Planning Consultant will coordinate working with the engineer to address issues like high wind zones or seismic activity and secure an engineer’s stamp.

Bottom line: If you work with us, you can be sure your project is in reliable hands from start to finish.