Budget & Financing Overview

How your budget shapes your project – and what to think about before you start spending

Why This Comes Early

Before you design, hire, or build anything, it helps to understand what you can realistically afford, and how you’ll pay for it. Your budget will influence the size of your project, the professionals you hire, how plans are developed, and even how long the process takes.

Most surprises in construction come from unclear scope or mismatched expectations. That’s why having a financial plan from the start is one of the most important things you can do, even if you’re still figuring out the details.

Why Budgeting Comes First

A lot of people wait until the end of the design process to “get pricing,” only to find out the plans are more expensive than expected. That often leads to value engineering, redesigns, or scope cuts, slowing things down and costing more than if it had been addressed earlier. You don’t need an exact number right now. What you do need is a working range, a rough idea of where your money will go, and an understanding of how your budget and scope will affect each other.

How Financing Affects the Process

If you’re using a loan, you’ll likely need permit-ready plans and signed contracts before the lender will release funds. That can affect when you can start and how fast the project moves. Even if you’re self-funding the project with cash, many of the same questions apply:

How are you allocating funds?
What’s your financial cushion for changes or surprises?
Will you phase the project or build it all at once?

Aligning your financing with the preconstruction process gives you more flexibility and fewer delays later.

What You’ll Learn in This Section

The following pages will help you understand your financial landscape and give you tools to start building a budget that works for your project.

Understanding Construction Costs: What makes construction expensive or affordable, how costs are calculated, and what to expect based on project type.
How to Build a Construction Budget: A step-by-step guide to creating a real working budget, including example categories, allowances, and contingency planning.
Financing Options for Construction Projects: Explore the pros and cons of different financing paths, construction loans, refinances, cash, or a mix of approaches.

Budgeting Tool

Budgeting Tool: A plug-and-play tool you can use to input your numbers, adjust for different project scopes, and test budget ranges.
Access the Budgeting Tool

What’s Next: Understanding Construction Costs

The first step in shaping your budget is understanding where the money goes. Before you can allocate funds, you need to know what drives costs up—or keeps them down. Head to Understanding Construction Costs to get familiar with how construction pricing works and what to watch for as you start planning.

Table of Contents