So, you want a new construction home. Are you crazy? Actually it can be a fun yet challenging and rewarding experience.
If you’ve never been through that experience and you want to give it a shot, be prepared. Be educated and get as much 2nd hand experience as you can. Maybe I can help. I built dozens of new construction homes and even remodeled a few over the years and in this blog I will share what I learned and some things I went through that I hope to someday forget ever happened.
Here I will offer to take you through the decision making and the planning and share the issues my home buyers were glad I prevented them from dealing with in the actual construction of the house on our way to closing on a home.
Go online and read a lot on building a home. Learn about warranties, budgets, terms, schedules, references, and anything else you think you might need to know more about. This blog is a guide to help you think about things you never thought about.
Let’s get started.
This blog idea came to me the day a buyer came in to the neighborhood for the first time. Their house was finished and they were there for the final walk through before closing. They were a family from New Jersey who built the house without ever even coming to the site. Who does that? Lots of people. More than you might imagine.
These people rely on their agent to share things like progress, problems, you know…the important stuff. Truth is, and don’t be upset all you agents out there but, you know these folks are busy bees trying to buy and sell houses and face it, they already got you. Don’t expect a regular detailed report.
After building a few homes and watching the interaction, or lack of interaction, between buyers, builders, agents and reality, I realized that this was relatively common practice and felt concerned for folks like these folks from California and New Jersey. Who was keeping them in the loop? Not their builder and not their agent, either. So, guess what? They hated it the second they saw it.
It was one of the first homes you would see as you rounded the smooth tree lined corners of the subdivision. It was big. Really big. It was tall and it was wide. It was a huge elevation, especially from the side. It was also the color of a bright pumpkin with yellow trim and grey rock. Standing there as the newly built mountain of a home in the neighborhood that was already known for class and beauty, was the “Cartoon House.” The buyers weren’t the only ones who hated it. We all hated it (outside anyway). Nobody blamed them, either. The inside was gorgeous and finely built to specification. A real work of quality and attention to detail. The problem was the outside. The colors they picked were selected from chips sent to them electronically from the design center which they reviewed and selected while on their computer in their kitchen in New Jersey. I placed the actual 3 X 5” chip they selected up against the house so they could compare and the chip disappeared. It was a perfect match. That’s what they bought.
Funny thing about color. It changes with the light. Everyone knows that, right? Well, maybe not everyone. There are a lot of little items like that affecting the final outcome and the satisfaction of the buyer.
This episode occurred early in my building days and I watched it happen to many builders and buyers. I saw so many people go to closing with angry faces and tears because they waited so long to get their dream house and something took it all away. Now, everything can be fixed, of course. Nothing is free.