Buying A Home
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
New construction or resale?
Hi ladies, I'm new to this board. DH and I are considering buying our first home. It is an exciting step and right now we're in the "learn everything we possibly can about the process" phase. We have crunched numbers and are pretty comfortable with the price range we've set. We still have to do the pre approval, but are waiting a bit on that since we don't actually have the capability to go house hunting in our desired location for a couple months yet. We've been referred to a real estate agent and may be working with her if we decide she's a good fit for us. But onto my actual question: how do you decide if you want new construction or resale? What are the benefits to each? Any personal anecdotes to share? There are a number of brand new communities popping up in the location we're moving to and I'm curious to know if we should purchase something new or go with an already established home. Thanks for any advice you can share.
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Re: New construction or resale?
I think this is a matter of preference.
There is no question that new homes are gorgeous, and there is excitement in being able to pick out everything exactly to your tastes. But for us, the locations of new communities weren't ideal, and location was the most important factor for us.
We were also concerned about resale in those communities. As an example, in one development that wasn't even completed yet, people couldn't sell the houses they had built because they were competing with new construction. We didn't like the fact that there was no mature landscaping and everything had been clear cut to build. We wanted something that was more established.
I think once you start looking you will know what feels better to you.
We are buying a new construction house. For us when we started to look in our price range we found about 10 year old homes that needed some changes or a new construction house for the same price.
The development we are moving into is almost complete. We are one of the last 5 houses to be built so there isn't the concern of the resale as much. We loved the feel of the neighborhood and that it has a nice playground and a good community feel. Our lot is on the edge of the community so we have mature trees in our backyard. Our house was being built for inventory so we have the added bonus of getting it soon enough to pick the finishes but not having to wait 6 months for it be ready (it should be done in around 8 weeks).
It's really a personal preference and for us it came down to mostly neighborhood, location, and what we were getting for the price. Good luck in your decision!
That would make the decision easy for us too! We don't have a million bucks
We started out thinking we were DEFINITELY, without question going with new construction. Unfortunately, the reality of new construction in our area didn't match our expectations.
We're in a very HCOL market and any new construction in our price range is not within a planned community, but on vacant lots. The new construction priced around $400K was surrounded by homes that sold for $250K and we didn't think they would retain their value.
Additionally, we found out that new construction usually ended up with a higher tax bill since you're taxed on the actual sales price as opposed to the municipality's estimation of the home's value. The difference ended up being a tax bill of $4K - $6K for existing homes and over $10K for new construction.
If it was in a planned community, I could definitely see us going for new construction despite the tax bill. I'm not sure if taxes are a big issue where you are, but definitely something to inquire about.
This was exactly us. There were a few new neighborhoods being built in our area, but they were further out and would have ended up being much more expensive for what we were looking for. We wanted at least a half acre lot with mature trees and landscaping and a 300+ sqft house. That would have cost us $500k+ and it wouldn't even be in the most desirable schools. We bought our house with an acre lot plus everything we wanted in one of the most well established neighborhoods for $250k. Pretty big difference. Our house is cosmetically outdated but the systems and roof have been updated. We can invest a big amount of money in our house and still be way under the price of a new construction. I really don't feel like new constructions hold their value the way established neighborhoods do.
I look for quality contruction which can be found in both -- and not found in both.
Low end new construction homes are often built with lower end materials . They look pretty when new, but they will not hold up like a 1940's home that was well maintained. It is all about what you prefer, how long you want to live in the house, where you want tolive.
This was our experience as well. We were able to find a great location with new construction for the same price of houses that needed upgrades. I'm not worried about resale, because we plan to live here for a long, long time.
I think once you start checking out the area for both types of homes, you'll realize quickly what your preference will be.
We looked a couple of new builds, and we found that in the case of those homes, the quality of workmanship was just in general lower than with some of the older homes, like the builder was trying to throw up the development ASAP, and they skimped on materials, etc.
Now, I know that that is certainly NOT true of all new builds, but I would pay attention to this if you are looking. Perhaps get some info from the realtor on which developers are more reliance and do quality work. Our realtor helped with pointing out some of these issues as well.
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DH and I looked at resale. The houses in our price range in the city we wanted to be in were all 15-20 years old and we would want to update everything as kitchen and bathrooms were light colored wood. We didn't think we'd be able to get new construction in our price range, but found a community 2 miles further out in the next city that was 25% complete.
After doing comparions, we decided on the new construction as it's someone of a lifestyle we are choosing. In the existing neighborhoods, the age range was all over the map with most people being empty nesters or having kids in hs. In the new construction, the age range was around 30-35 and everyone has toddlers or are starting familes and this is why we went with new construction. We want that young neighboorhood feeling where everyone is out in the yard playing with their kids on the weekends and there are other kids around for our children to play with. That is what DH and I choose new construction. (we understand resale will be tough as the neigherhood is developing, but we plan to live here for a good long while).
The only new constructions in the areas we were considering we're townhouses. We wanted a single family home with a decent amount of land. We ended up with a beautifully maintained 1926 house with all new appliances, windows, kitchen, trek deck, original covered front porch, and detached 2.5 car garage.
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