House Floor Plan Design: Easy Guide for Landlords

Why is a house floor plan design important to landlords? Here is why it’s important; So you got a good deal on a property that you know has the potential to become a high yield property.

The only damper on it is that it needs a lot of upgrades and you do not know what to do?

You would want to do improvements to increase rental value, but you ask, well can you change the way the house is built? The answer is yes, yes you can.

First things first, do you know what a house floor plan design is? No? No worries, let us share a bit of information about house floor plan designing with you and how it can help your problem.

1. What is a house floor plan design
2. How can I design my own house plan? 
3. What are the best free floor plan tools?
4. How do I find the floor plan for my house? 
5. Where can I find floor plans for sale? 

1. What Is A House Floor Plan Design?

House floor plan design or more commonly called floor plan or house plan, is a drawing of the layout of a house that is either in planning, about to be built or built from above.

It indicates the true-to-size measurements of a room, type of rooms and where the doors and windows would be.

There are various types of floor plans, it all depends on how graphic you would like the plan to be and whether you prefer detailed floor plans over a basic floor plan. The types are;

1. 2D Floor Plan – 2D floor plans provide a flat lay of the house plan from above, it is the least graphic house plan out of the three as it has no perspective or depth of the spaces in the house.
2. 3D Floor Plan – 3D floor plans provide a more illustrative view of the house plan, still with a view from above. As the name suggests it provides a three-dimensional view of the house layout that allows the viewers to gauge the height and space of the rooms.
3. Live 3D Floor Plan – The most visually helpful of the three is the Live 3D floor plan where home layouts are given more life with virtual reality (VR). This plan cannot be created on paper, using a device lets the viewers experience a walkthrough of their house plan. It lets viewers properly assess the size of the rooms in the house with more clarity.

Moving on from that, you might ask why is a house floor plan design important? A house plan helps you oversee how smart the placements of the rooms in the house are. 

For example, it would make sense to have a dining room beside the kitchen as you cook in the kitchen and eat in the dining room, now imagine instead of that layout you decided to put the dining room beside the master bedroom, what would be the function of that?

A smart house plan is also good for marketing, it will be a lot easier to rent a house that requires fewer home renovations than it is to rent out a house that you need to build back from the ground up because every room is inconvenient to the future tenants.

Other than that a house plan is necessary to convey your ideas to the contractors, they would easily be able to see what the measurements of each room would be.

That way when building the house they know exactly how big each room will be and how high the height of the room needs to be. 

If you are still unconvinced, imagine that you have a house set in your head, instead of putting it on paper you just described it to the builder, no measurements, just “oh, the dining room has to be bigger than the hallway but not as big as the living room.”  

Now imagine a dining room that could fit up to maybe 10 tenants but for others, they might have thought you just need it big enough to fit you and whoever’s living with you, hence miscommunication happens.

With the house already built, there is no going back unless you do another major renovation costing you more than what you had in mind.  So better be safe than sorry, create a house floor plan.

2. How Can I Design My Own House Plan?

Now that you have got the gist of what a house plan is, let us now move on to the designing part. So suppose you want to cut costs and not hire a designer, so how CAN you design your own house plan? 

Whether you are building the house from nothing or you just want to upgrade a room or two, both situations you have to start the same way;

You need to brainstorm. Put your ideas on a piece of paper, make a list of rooms you want to have, the features you want each room to have, and draw out a rough sketch of your ideas if you must. 

What you have to do is organising and prioritising what you need versus what you want. Take into consideration the future, as a landlord, you have to think about what a tenant would find attractive enough to choose your lot over a competitor.

The first would be how functional the property is and then what other offerings the house gives. No tenant wants a house that is fancy but is inconvenient to live in.

Having everything written down lets you organise what is necessary and what is whimsical, you need the necessities and once that is settled perhaps you have some leftover budget, only then you can indulge in the whimsy.

You need a toilet more than you need a fountain in the middle of the house after all. Yes you know you NEED at least one bathroom, but then you think maybe you WANT more to accommodate multiple tenants?

That is when you have to look into your budget and see if you can afford it or if you have to sacrifice something else.

After shortlisting everything and every room in the house is in order, that is when you start drawing.

You can either do it freehand with a pencil and sketch paper or you can use any floor plan software. Just make sure to put in the proper measurements of each room.

3. What Are The Best Free Floor Plan Tools?

As the heading states, these are recommendations of the best 3 free floor plan software that can help you start designing your own floor plans:

• SketchUp – Is a free Live 3D floor plan design software you can find on the internet. It is simple enough that people with no prior experience can navigate through it. The created layout would be in a Live 3D floor plan so you can walk through your build and look at what you need to improve on and what you can move on with.

• Floorplanner– This is online software that allows you to create either 2D or 3D floor plans. It is very simple and easy to use for beginners that you will not even need to read a manual to begin. Other features of the application include an interior decorating function should you feel like pre-planning what furniture you want to have in the room.

• Planner 5D – Planner 5D lets you immerse yourself in your designs, providing multiple details and a walkthrough while being easy to navigate for a beginner. It provides you with a template that you can play around with, create upgrades or just use.

In the end, it depends on how detailed or realistic you want your floor plan to be, remember that floor plans are important in helping you envision the changes about to happen to your house.

4. How Do I Find The Floor Plan For My House?

If you bought a built house instead of vacant land, you should know that there is already an existing house floor plan that you can use to see what needs improvements. So how do you find the floor plan for the house?

Firstly, if the house is newly built and you bought it directly from the developers then chances are you can get it from the developer’s office or even from the contractors themselves.

They would need to have a copy at hand to sell the house and build it so going to them would be the easiest solution.

Secondly, if you bought the house from an owner that might have lost it while moving, then you can go to your town’s municipality office or Majlis Bandaraya/Perbandaran.

They would have a copy of each of the houses under its district, whether it is renovated or not as if you want to do a renovation you need to get the township’s agreement.

The third option is, should it be difficult for you to procure the house plan from the other two options is to recreate the house plan on your own.

You can choose to hire a designer to do that too but if you are looking to spend as little as possible then you have to whip out the pencil and paper.

This option is risky as you need to figure out which wall bears the weight of the house and which wall the electrical wiring is behind as well as the plumbing. If it sounds too complicated, then your best bet is to look at the other two options.

5. Where Can I Find House Plans For Sale?

We have talked about designing your own house floor plan, we have talked about the best tools to help you with it but what if you just do not want to design your own house plan? That is an option too. 

Say you rather purchase a house plan than do it on your own because you do not think you have enough imagination or drawing talent for it (not shaming anyone, this writer can barely draw a stick figure).

Or it can also be because you do not have the time to do so, it is okay. So that aside, where can you find house plans for sale?

The obvious option is to go to an architect, whether attached to a firm or an individual architect, an experienced one can easily accommodate your demands into the design. However, the more experienced the architect is, the more costly it would be.

Getting a less experienced architect such as a freshly graduated college architect because their rates would be cheaper also comes with the risk of them not knowing how to cater to your needs.

A more experienced architect can also offer their advice on if your demands can benefit you as a landlord, in the long run, they would know what is a good design for easier maintenance and what is not.

Something that a fresh architect would need years of work before they can offer the same services.

Another option is to purchase readily available designs from a firm or online. There are multiple websites that sell ready-made house floor plan designs that you can purchase from.

The downside to this is that not all floor plans would have everything you want, and not all floor plans would be accepted by your township office.

So with purchasing a pre-made design you have to tread carefully, take your time to go through the designs before deciding on one. It would be even better if you head to your town municipality to inquire about the house renovation regulations before you start searching.

Home improvement is a long, tedious process for everyone, but it is a lot more complicated if you decide to wing it rather than having a solid house floor plan design this is where most renovation mistakes happen.

Your bathroom might end up in the kitchen and your dining room in the master bedroom, no one wants to pay more to fix a mistake that could easily be prevented in the first place. 

So on that note, take your time and have a little patience in choosing and designing your house floor plan to better attract future tenants.