Buying A Home
mdupon70997
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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.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
To Build or Buy Preowned?
My husband and I are looking at buying a new home in a couple of years (I know we've got a way to go), and I was wondering what you guys preferred? To buy a pre-owned home (either one that's turnkey or one that needs a LITTLE updating) or building a house. My husband does NOT want to build because he says that it's too expensive and that it takes too long. I really don't care either way, just as long as we have something we really love.
Re: To Build or Buy Preowned?
Other posters may feel differently, but unless you build custom, the current builders (in most cases) these days do fast work, with cheap materials, and cheap labor.
The benefit is that you will get your home built in 3-4 months.
The drawback is that it will look like it was built in 3-4 months.
The quality in new home construction is not the same now as it used to be in the 1980's and 1990's.
I vote for an existing property.
We were having the same dilemma and decided on an older home. The cost difference just wasn't worth it. I would rather buy an older home that needed some work. This way we could fix it up over time, to our own taste and pay for the updates with cash, as opposed to over the course of 30 years.
Have you ever done a price out with a builder with all the upgrades you want ? You might be very surprised how much more expensive it is.
I think it really depends on where you live, regarding the prices. And there are definite pros and cons to buying either. For new homes, there tends to be less maintenance, you can pick exactly what you want for the finishes and you usually have a home warranty, but the lots tend to be smaller, there may or may not be excessive fees and if you're in a developing area there is the potential for "unsightly" things to be built right by you (happened to my mom). For older homes, you tend to get more mature neighborhoods/trees, but sometimes there are maintenance issues that you have to deal with.
Where we live, homes that are being built in new subdivisions tend to be a lot more expensive than pre-owned homes (and the newer ones tend to have less yard space too). However, if you buy some land and build yourself, it comes out to about the same price as buying an older home.What you may want to consider is if you're worried about building taking too long, you can find a cute preowned home now when interest rates are really low and the market is still saturated with homes for sale, and save money towards building your dream home in a couple of years. This is what we ended up doing. We bought a 2000 sq ft home that was at the bottom of our price range (our mortgage payment is half of what our rent was!) and that we could see ourselves living in for the next 5+ yrs and we're are putting all that "extra" money aside to buy some land on a lake and build a new home just for us.
Good luck with whichever road you guys choose!
I would love to have built a home, but for the timeframe that we wanted and the location we wanted, there weren't that many options. Land is expensive, and like other PP's have mentioned, upgrades can cost a lot when building. In my opinion, you would be better off finding a home that is already built with some features that you like, but with upgrades that you can make yourselves to save at least 50%.
And, just so you know, it is harder to get approved for a mortgage if you're building rather than buying an existing property. Not sure if that will sway your decision at all.
DIY & Home Decor Blog
I prefer pre-owned in an established good neighborhood. Allow for making changes to the home if needed.
IMO it all depends on what's important to you. An older home will require more maintenance and is more likely to lead to unexpected expenses. There is no way around this. It will likely not have the exact finishes you would like, but you can change those things over time as you can afford it. You will likely get a larger yard and more square footage for less. New construction, once built, is easy. You're starting fresh, and everything will be exactly what you chose, but building is a lot of work at the get-go, and new construction isn't always as high quality. You will also likely have no trees in your yard for quite some time.
I think you should look at both. See what's out there.
As others have stated, it depends on where you're looking. We built a house . Initially, we looked to buy a preowned. There weren't many options in the area that we wanted to live. We found that we could build a house with all of the finishes and on lot that we wanted for cheaper then some of the preowned homes that were available. Again, that might not be the case in other areas.
In regards to the builder quality, we did our research. We looked at models and spoke with neighbors that have lived in the sub for 5+ years. They all had good things to say about the builder and quality of the home.
We've been in our house for a year now and are happy with the result.