Keeping it simple may be the crucial step to curbing construction costs when attempting to build a home.
Yet often in the hunt for the dream design, first-time home builders inadvertently hike up their construction costs.
Former president of the Contractors Association of Trinidad and Tobago, Mikey Joseph, told the Business Guardian that complicated plans push up costs regularly.
“Construction is expensive, and good construction is even more expensive. The material requirements, labour, it’s expensive,” said Joseph in a telephone interview.
“You would have an organisation that may probably be specialised in custom-built homes, but most people, who are building their homes as an individual, would not want to subscribe to a custom-built (standard) home, because everybody will have about the same design of house. And if people can keep their homes simple, like spans between columns, 10 feet by 10 feet, and things like that. The cost could be better managed. But when you have spans of 12 feet, 15 feet, when you’re building on sloping lands, when you’re looking at stylish roofs because, because the design to support the loads. Once your span crosses 10 by 10 feet, your cost of construction increases because the material required will be heavier and the foundation will have to be larger,” said Joseph.
However, he said this would only minimally reduce costs, given that several factors in construction are expensive, particularly when they enter into arrangements with ill-equipped or unqualified contractors.
“If people stick to simple routine homes, and they could run with custom models, the construction cost will go down a bit. But construction materials are expensive, and while the labour is not cheap, it’s not really as expensive as it should be. Most of the people building houses tend to look to get themselves involved with contractors who are not organised businessmen. They would pay more, especially when you go that way.”
In the past few years, there has been an emergence of various companies offering container and pre-fab homes, such as Chefpro Megastore and Tiny Homes T&T.
However, one company that has attempted to bring lower-cost homes to the public while using traditional concrete structures is Hunter Stern Construction. The company has stated that it can construct a full three bedroom, two bathroom house for $300,000 in its Hunter Stern HomeStart Programme.
A company official explained they have attempted to keep costs down by carefully assessing the market and purchasing materials in the most cost-effective manner.
“We’ve reviewed the cost of homes and thought about it. We’ve seen the prices of the materials. And we’ve noticed that sometimes when the prices go down, the cost of the house does not come down, and it makes you ask, Well, what is causing that? There was a time during the COVID years when the price of steel rose to between $12,000 and $15,000 a tonne, and the construction companies raised their prices to match that. But when the price of steel went back down to like about $5,000 to $6,000 a tonne, nobody changed their prices and we began doing some more research on our end regarding it,” said Olivia Garcia of Hunter Stern construction.
“So instead of going to hardware for blocks, we would go to Abel. Instead of going to hardwares for aggregate, we’d go to National Quarries. Instead of going to other places for specific items, we just purchase wholesale, and we’re able to do that. Quantifying each project and each of our homes,’ she explained.
However, she, like Joseph, noted that inconsistent building plans and standards were also a major driver of higher house prices.
This, she felt, could be addressed if there were a proper building code enforced in the construction market.
“You need to have a standard that people need to be held to. You can have three different people that are building a flat house, and they’re using three different types of steel, three different sizes. Why? There must be a standard for a specific thing,” she said, “Because a lot of these people who are giving prices in the industry, they’re not qualified to do so. They don’t understand the engineering behind the homes. So, therefore, you have them building homes on poor engineering skills, on poor quantifying skills. And this will obviously show up in the future as a problem.”
Joseph agreed that there was very much a free-for-all with regard to construction in the country, which also created major problems and increased costs for most clients.
“That nearly comes like a joke because the majority of homes in Trinidad and Tobago violate the building codes in more than one way or the other. If people would abide by the codes, and if the builders expected to build up within the codes, you would have more durable homes,” said Joseph, who, however, felt that in some cases, the codes were ignored to cut corners and costs. But often this would result in greater expenses for clients later on.
“The amount of labour required may be the same, but if the contractor follows the specifications, they’ll get a better constructed house. You know, a lot of people who use these guys, who don’t operate within the codes, they may get a house that might appear cheap, but then, sometimes within two, three years, you start to see cracks. You start to see all types of deterioration that shouldn’t be. The building code is there to provide that when you build a house, regardless of what the cost is, the house will last you a minimum, 25-30-50, years, according to the design of the house,” said Joseph.
Garcia felt enforcement and contracts were crucial to ensure clients were getting what they signed up for and protection from errors and cost overruns.
“You must have somebody to hold contractors and builders to a standard. This is why, with us, we have detailed contracts. Our contracts come with our catalogues that detail the items you’re getting,” she said, adding that even specifications should be stated in these contracts to deter contractors from breaching the client’s wishes.
