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Buying a newly built home might seem appealing. Read on to see why it could end up being a disaster.
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When my husband and I listed our starter home years back in the hopes of upsizing, we didn’t expect it to fly off the market. But because we’d priced it competitively and used a good real estate agent to market it, that’s what happened.
At that point, we had to scramble to find a new home to buy since the clock was ticking down on our closing date for the sale. And so we decided to sign a contract to buy a new construction home in our neighborhood.
At the time we signed our contract, our home had an exterior, but the interior hadn’t even been framed out. This gave us an opportunity to customize many aspects of our build.
We were really excited about the prospect of getting to design our own home and move into a place that no one had lived in before. But in the end, buying new construction was a terrible experience — so much so that I’d never do it again.
When your builder is shady and cheap
Our new construction contract mapped out the various features our home would come with. But there were some gray areas in terms of the quality of the fixtures our builders had to provide.
For example, our contract called for granite countertops in our kitchen. That was it. It didn’t say what specific type of granite we’d get. Well, it turns out, the process of choosing granite for our kitchen involved me meeting my builder at a highway rest stop, following him to some shady off-the-beaten-path location, and traipsing through a so-called “granite yard” that looked like it was some random dude’s backyard.
Then, when I found a stone I liked from the minimal selection I was presented with, I was told there would be an upcharge for that particular selection. Seeing as how we were already looking at an expensive mortgage loan, I wasn’t happy. But I also wasn’t eager to repeat the process elsewhere, so I agreed.
And that’s not the only area of my home where my builder cheaped out on me. When he put together my bathrooms, he basically stuck bulbs in the wall and called them lighting fixtures. My husband and I had to shell out a few hundred dollars at Home Depot to replace them with fixtures that at least looked like they belonged in a home, as opposed to a junkyard.
When things keep getting delayed
Not only did we end up experiencing some quality issues during our build, but we found that our builder’s time frame was just plain off. Our initial contract called for a June completion of our home. We wound up moving in during the month of October.
In between, we had to find and pay for temporary housing. We didn’t have kids back then, but we did have a dog, which makes finding a rental all the more difficult. And we also had to pay to move all of our stuff into storage — and keep it there — until our home was complete.
My builder kept blaming his delays on things like hold-ups with permits. But we also knew there were many days when his crew just wasn’t working on our home when they should’ve been. That was terribly frustrating.
A process I’m not willing to repeat
There are certainly benefits to buying new construction. And to be fair, some builders don’t make you meet them on the side of a road to pick out your granite, and some also don’t underestimate your move-in date by more than four months.
But clearly, all these years later, I’m still kind of annoyed about how things went down. And because of that, I just don’t see myself being willing to buy new construction again — at least not the kind where you customize your build.
I would be willing to buy new construction where a completed home is presented to you but has yet to be occupied. Going that route would no doubt eliminate the primary issues that turned me off.
Meanwhile, prospective buyers should know that last year, more than one-third of U.S. single-family homes were of the new construction variety. But be very careful if the home in question is incomplete like mine was, because you don’t want to get stuck with inferior features, massive delays, and awkward roadside meetings.
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