Whether your land is in the mountains of Cayo, on the shore of the mainland, or on one of the Cayes, your first step will be to employ the services of an architect.
Finding An Architect In Belize
If you haven’t met anyone yet who has employed an architect, visit the website for the Association of Professional Architects of Belize.
Legally, any person practicing architecture in Belize must be registered with this association. It currently lists 43 professional architects, so there isn’t a shortage of them in Belize.
Using An Architect From North America
Technically, you can work with an American architect, but you will still need to have a Belizean architect or a Belizean engineer redraw, stamp, and sign the blueprints. Effectively, you would be paying two professionals to do the job that one can accomplish.
Additionally, unless you use an architect from a similar climate, like South Florida, your architect may not design an ideal structure to withstand our weather, best orient your home for energy efficiency, or with the most cutting-edge materials for our climate.
If you find a floor plan of a home that you really like, you can provide it to your Belizean architect. This is how we originally drafted our home plan. I literally cut-and-pasted pieces of builders’ floor plans that I liked and created a Frankenstein house to give our architect a rough idea of the layout we desired.
Interviewing Architects
Reach out to at least three Belizean architects and ask questions… for example:
- May you speak to clients of theirs who have built a home?
- What is their process and timeline?
- How does their billing work?
- Do they offer additional services, such as a “Cost to Complete” report, interior design, or 3-D virtual plans?
- Do they offer site visits while the home is under construction at critical junctures (to ensure your home builder is building your home to the blueprints’ specifications)?
Paying For Their Services
In Belize (or anywhere else) do not ever pay 100% of the fee up front! There is no urgency on the service person’s part to deliver your product on time.
The architect we chose to work with performed an initial consultation via Microsoft Teams at no cost. This meeting was more of a “get to know each other” and discuss what was important to us in our home design.
Once we decided to engage his services, we paid 50% to start the process, and he included three major redesigns without additional charge. The remaining 50% was due prior to his production of the finished blueprints, once all our decisions had been made.
We opted to pay for an a la carte item, a “Cost to Complete” report, where our architect priced out every aspect of our home’s build, complete with quantities and costs.
This not only made it easier for potential builders to provide us their price to build (we simply created a duplicate copy with the quantities but erased the figure the architect quoted before handing it over) but also gave us leverage to negotiate on prices if a builder quoted something far off of the architect’s estimate.
Upon signing a letter of engagement with our architect, he visited our building site with us to discuss the home’s placement not only for views, but also for maximizing airflow inside and sun exposure for solar panels outside. He looked for high spots on the land and made suggestions on the distance from the sea and the property boundaries.
For reference, I worked for home builders for two decades in the United States, so I know more than most clients. However, I know almost nothing about building a home on the sea in the tropics, so having someone familiar with local building materials, weather challenges, and ideal home placement was critical.
Does It Take Long To Design Your Home?
A lot of that depends on how decisive you are. If you can decide quickly and stick to it, designing your home might take 10 to 12 weeks, depending on your architect’s workload.
Ours took closer to five months, and that was partially due to waiting on an ICF Builder from Wisconsin to provide details for certain materials, who ghosted us when we expected his final numbers. Unfortunately, not all businesspeople are professional.
Home Designing Regrets
We should have been much firmer with our target budget for the architect. My “Frankenstein House” plans were right at 2,000 square feet livable. We danced around our budget, hoping he wouldn’t push it to the max, but I did say that I hoped he would find a more efficient way to lay our home out, to land closer to 1,800 square feet.
Working with home builders in the United States, they would quote a “price per square foot” based on livable—which means heated and cooled—space. Custom builders typically would provide a price based on “under roof,” so that would include garages. Here, the price is going to include anything you can step on… decks, patios, and exterior walkways.
When we expected to see an 1,800-square-foot livable home plus a 300-square-foot bodega (garage), our architect sent his draft with a house that was over 11,000 square feet when accounting for decks and patios!
While it was breathtakingly beautiful, the livable square footage was over 3,400. To say it far exceeded what we wanted—and could afford—is an understatement. We had to have a very frank conversation with our architect and reel him back into our reality.
Once you and your architect have a final draft, they will produce your construction documents, sign, and stamp them. They will also have to be reviewed, signed, and stamped by a Belizean engineer. We were fortunate that our architect could do this all in-house.
He also applied for all permits on our behalf. Plans must be approved by the Central Building Authority in Belmopan and by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Even though our home will be off grid, we were still required to get PUC approval.
Both approvals were granted in under two weeks, so if your architect is organized, they should be able to complete approvals swiftly.
Your Home Plans Are Approved, Now What?
Hopefully, you have started interviewing home builders and narrowing down potential matches. If not, know that you have one year from the issuance of your building permit to start construction, or else you will have to reapply.
A few of the top home builders on my island, Ambergris Caye, are booked out for a year or more, so if you are considering an in-demand builder, perhaps pause on applying for your permits until you have decided on your builder, and they can provide an accurate availability date.
Sharon Lord
Contributor, Overseas Property Alert