Apr

2011

comm

5 Reasons Why you Should Not Build a New Home

Posted by Adam Gomez

Weve all dreamed of building our own home (read: having someone else build it for us) at one point or another. After all, a home is a very personal thing. Its the place where we spend the majority of our time. Its the place where we might raise a family. And its the place where we want to relax and be comfortable.

Building a home allows us to control all aspects of a home. Theres nothing to complain about its all new and fresh and should be maintenance free for many years to come!

Resist. The. Urge.

There are undoubtedly some benefits to building a new home. However, the negatives far outweigh them. Here are 5 reasons why you show not build a new home.

1. The Cost of New Homes Vs. Older Homes

There are a few reasons why new homes are going to cost you more than equivalent older homes.

In a poor housing market, such as what we have right now (and likely will for many years to come), foreclosures and slow home turnover results in lower prices for older homes.

According to the AP, the median price of a new home in the United States is now 48 percent higher than that of a home being resold, more than three times the gap in a healthy housing market. 48%! I dont care how nice the new digs would be, there are too many nice older homes on the market right now to pay a 48% premium on a new one.

The thing is you cant really get a good deal on a home that you build. All leverage power you had went out the door when you told the builder you were interested in working with them. Its a buyers market for existing homes right now. But its always a sellers market when you build new.

You might be able to get a good deal on a new home that has already been built and is sitting around but youll almost never get one if youre building your dream home.

2. The Environmental Impact

I would personally find it very hard to justify using up all of the materials, adding to urban sprawl, and authorizing the CO2 output required to build a new home vs. buying an older home (particularly when there are so many vacated homes already on the market).

Even if you build a LEED certified home (which youll pay a huge premium for), you could simply use up less energy by moving into a smaller home or retro-fitting an older home with energy saving materials.

The exception to this is if you build a tiny home to live in. And double bonus if you use reclaimed materials. These homes have a significantly lower carbon footprint because they use so much less energy and materials.

3. The Hassle

This is coming from personal experience, but Ive never met someone who has built a home and didnt complain about how much work, micromanagement, decision-making, fighting, and frustration it created for them.

If you place a value on time, buying an older home is so much quicker and easier.

4. The Quality (or Lack of it)

They just dont make them like they used to.

Ive bought two homes and probably looked at 100 homes in the process that were built over the last 100+ years (if youre a realtor, you should probably run if I approach you. Im a very big pain in the ass). From a quality of material standpoint, newer homes of similar cost tend to have much lower quality materials than older homes.

Yes, its newer. But that doesnt mean its better.

You see, craftsmanship and pride used to count for something in the homebuilding industry. There were many more local builders, but the industry, much like the fast food industry, has consolidated and turned it into a factory-like process that puts a premium on speed and keeping labor and material costs down.

Ill never forget walking into a pair of houses built in 2007 that both had huge foundation cracks running from the top to the bottom of the basement wall. 2007! Most builders these days dont care about getting the job done right. They just care about getting it done as cheaply and quickly as possible.

5. The Pride

This is strictly personal opinion. If I ever built a home, Id feel like I took the easy way out in that I didnt have to put any work in to improving anything. Having done a lot of remodeling work on both of the homes Ive owned, I feel like theres a lot of pride to taking something and leaving it in a better condition than when you found it.

Even if its a simple floor sanding or wall painting project, that just seems so much more rewarding than walking into a house that requires no elbow grease.

Building a New Home Discussion:

Have you built a new home? What was your experience?
Do you want to build a new home? Why?

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