1. One good way to save roughly 10 to 15% on the overall construction process is to be your own general contractor. However, if you're not familiar with the phases of construction I wouldn’t recommend this one.
2. Plan, plan, plan. The more planning the better, select your home plans and begin planning. Go over every aspect of your home plans and make as many decisions as you can in advance. Make notes on your set of house plans because the better you know what you want to do, the better you can communicate these details to your sub-contractors or contractor, and the less chance there will be for miscommunications. Fewer changes equals less mistakes and that equals more money saved.
3. Set the build schedule tight. Time equals money, the less time you spend in the construction process, the less interest you have to spend on the construction loan. Require each sub-contractor to provide you with a close time frame that they will need to complete their phases of the project. Inform them that you will be scheduling the next sub-contractor immediately behind them and they must be finished inside the time frame they provided.
4. Collect 3 bids for every phase of construction. This will give you an average cost for each phase as well as expose the overpriced guys. Make sure you require references with bid packages to ensure quality along with the best price. Require that your home plan sets are returned with each bid in the same condition they were picked up in. You may want to purchase additional plan sets so you can have multiple contractors preparing your bids at the same time, or simply wait for each set to be returned. But always collect 3 bids for every step of the process.
5. You can save money by going with less expensive flooring and other material selections this time and later on you can upgrade selections as your budget allows. Also, you can upgrade one room at a time.
6. Do your own trim work and cabinetry. If you have a little carpentry in your background you may want to save labor costs by doing these more expensive labor items yourself. If you run into any gray areas doing these yourself you can find plenty of info in books, magazines, and countless youtube videos available to assist you and increase your library of knowledge while saving some dollars along the way.
7. Build on a smaller footprint. You can achieve your required living space without having a huge foundation area. Achieve living space by building on a basement foundation vs a crawlspace. This will provide not only more living space but a safe storm shelter as well. Also, you can achieve more living space by building your roof with room-in-attic trusses, providing living areas in your roof area. Stacking your house plan design in this manner will decrease the cost of roofing material and labor costs. Building on a smaller footprint will cut overall costs of construction.
8. Require that ALL sub-contractors clean up after themselves. You will need to provide them with a dumpster or dump truck or trailer to dispose of their scrap materials, but requiring that they do their own clean-up will speed up the construction process by not having each contractor clean up after the guy before him in order to get started with the next phase. Time equals money. You will also see savings by not having to hire a cleanup crew.
9. Make sure your material providers will allow you to return unused materials to be credited to your account. Make sure to discuss this with your sub-contractors to ensure that they understand your intentions, and let them know that you are keeping track of material counts as well.
10. Track your budget closely and track all changes by using written change orders to ensure there is no confusion between you and sub-contractors at the end of your project about the costs of changes made throughout the process. And remember fewer changes equals fewer miscommunications.