When starting your home-building journey, one of the most common questions is: should you choose your land first or design your house? It might be tempting to start designing your dream home once you make the decision, even though you are still looking for the right piece of land. However, we recommend you get the land first – and here are 5 reasons why.
Orientation: Let the Sun Lead the Way
What does orientation mean? It’s about understanding the sun’s movement across your site and designing a home that directly relates to how the sun moves. In the southern hemisphere, the sun moves through the north.
Imagine waking up every morning to sunlight streaming into your living room, warming your home naturally and saving you money on energy costs. That’s the magic of proper orientation. Choosing land with good solar exposure – or designing your home to make the most of the site’s conditions – is a cornerstone of energy-efficient living.
At ecokit, we make this a priority in our Project Discovery stage. This is where we analyze the sun’s path across your property, factoring in seasonal changes, shading from trees or neighboring buildings, and the best way to position your home. Although a well insulated, airtight home doesn’t necessarily need the passive solar design, it’s a feature you and your family will appreciate. It will bring natural light and warm sun rays on cold days that will brighten your mood on winter days.
Views: Frame the Picture You Want
How can you design the perfect home without knowing the land it will sit on? The land defines so much about your home – from the main views to the areas beyond your property that you’ll want to highlight or minimize.
For instance, what if the best views are at the front of the property, but north is at the rear? This scenario poses a tricky challenge: balancing the desire to frame stunning views with the need for optimal orientation. You’ll likely live in your new home for years to come, so it’s worth taking the time to carefully plan how to showcase the beauty of the surroundings while ensuring practicality.
At ecokit, we specialize in helping you navigate these decisions, creating designs that harmonize with both your site’s potential and your long-term comfort.
Privacy: Your Sanctuary, Your Rules
Having a connection with the space and land around us forms our sense of belonging in a home, just as having privacy does. However, privacy doesn’t always require walls or opaque glass – there are more creative and harmonious ways to achieve it.
A house can be designed to limit views into the home from the street and neighbors. Strategic positioning of the home on the land can also screen certain areas from prying eyes, ensuring your privacy while maintaining an open, inviting feel. It’s difficult to assess and plan for these aspects if the home is designed without first understanding the site’s specific context, such as its surroundings and potential overlooking issues.
At ecokit, we address these challenges by incorporating natural barriers like hedges or trees, as well as architectural elements such as angled walls or clerestory windows, all seamlessly integrated into the design. By considering these factors early, we create solutions that feel both organic and purposeful, ensuring your home is a true sanctuary.
Cost: Avoid Surprises
Building a home requires careful budget management. While the cost of constructing a modular home like ecokit is fairly fixed, the specific conditions of your land can significantly influence overall expenses.
Your site might impact the requirements for the concrete slab, the structural design of the home, or assumptions about service connection costs. Factors such as topography, soil type, wind ratings, services location, and existing vegetation all play a role in how the home can be designed and positioned, directly affecting the total project cost. These variables are unique to the site you choose.
If you design your home first and allocate a fixed budget to its components before buying the land, these site-specific variables can lead to unexpected costs and unpleasant surprises. This is where our Project Discovery stage becomes invaluable. During this phase, we identify potential challenges, such as regulatory requirements or vegetation assessments, and provide a detailed breakdown of all preliminary costs. This proactive approach ensures you have a clear and accurate picture of what’s involved, enabling you to plan confidently and avoid budget overruns.
Options: Tailoring Your Dream Home
Finding the right block of land to suit an existing design is a lot trickier than finding the right home design for your site. Every site has its boundaries, its neighbors, its slope, its views, its position, its size, its shape, and its location. The design of your home should respond to all those aspects and incorporate these elements to suit your site specifically and to make the most of the land.
At ecokit, our modular system is designed with flexibility in mind. Thanks to its modular nature, the structure can be easily customized to suit any site. Whether your block is steep, irregularly shaped, or lacks the perfect northern sun exposure and views, our designs adapt effortlessly. This approach ensures your home not only fits your site but also maximizes its potential, creating a perfect harmony between the land and the structure.
Creating a home that is specific to its surrounding, and that maximises the assets of that land, will bring value to your life – a financial value – in the form of a home that costs less to run and has real, long-term livability. More importantly though – it will allow you to design and build a home that is a beautiful, sustainable and amazing living environment for years to come.
