Barden Building Products Blog Archive

If you're thinking about buying a house in Upstate New York, you’ve likely discovered just how challenging the process can be. 

The moment a decent listing goes live, it’s flooded with offers and often disappears within days. Prices are climbing. Choices are shrinking. And for many buyers — especially first-timers or growing families — the entire process can feel exhausting.

But here’s the good news: You’re not stuck. Instead of battling it out in a tough market, you can build the home you actually want, from the ground up.

Some Barden custom homeowners have an enhanced sense of ownership over their homes.

Why? 

It's not because they custom designed it to fit their lifestyle, nor is it because there's not another home like it (though both play into it).

Their pride of ownership comes from the fact that they took a more involved path to realizing their dream home, taking on the general contractor (GC)  role for their project. Fully embracing the idea of "build your custom home," there's very little they don't know about their home and the work that went into it.

But even for those with the best intentions, going the GC route route isn't always the best idea.

Many hopeful homeowners hear the same refrain: "The housing market is tough."

This has been true for several years now and is expected to continue. Finding the ideal pre-existing home is increasingly difficult and costly.

For many aspiring homeowners, building a custom home is the next option. However, new home construction faces its own challenges, mainly due to supply chain issues, which make the process difficult.

It's a tough question for anyone looking to build a new custom home: Do I wait for home construction loan interest rates to go down or move forward on my project?

High interest rates have (unfortunately) become a fact of life in recent years, and they're not just limited to loans for real estate or home construction. Auto, student, and personal loans all have a higher price tag when all is said and done.

It’s something you’ve always dreamed about: building your own custom home. You’ve had this dream so long that you know exactly what you want down to the smallest detail. You even have the perfect property picked out. 

There’s no one way to build a custom home. But the simple reality is that all homes take time to construct. 

In a custom home building project, there are usually three ideas about how the process will go:

For some, the dream of custom homeownership is realized in a very hands-on manner.

Congratulations on deciding to build your own custom home! 

Now comes the fun part -- diving headfirst into all the elements to make your next home a reality such as coming up with a floor plan that meets all your needs to finding the perfect spot if you already haven’t.  

Before you take your first steps into custom home building, you may be wondering about one of the most common questions we get: When is the best time to start home construction?

The answer probably isn’t what you think. 

Let’s unpack that question.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if after deciding to build a custom home, you immediately found the perfect contractor?