Introduction
When you buy a home, the building can come with a lot of baggage. Maybe it isn’t designed to your liking or there are accessibility difficulties, all of which require costly renovations. If you’ve found yourself here, you’re wondering if you can have a new home built to meet all your wants and needs.
Well, you can, but should you?
The decision to own any home shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’ll shape your family’s finances for generations to come, after all. It’s best to do your homework before committing to any option, including homebuilding.
Fortunately, you don’t need to look too far to find the information you need. Below you’ll find an easy read that’s concise and tells you what you need to know. If you need more, other sites like ourfamilyplace have more info.
The Pros of Building a Home
We’ll lead with the positives of building your own home. Measure your expectations against the five points below to see if building a home is practical.
1. The Power Is In Your Hands
Even as a homeowner, there are some aspects of a bought house that you can’t change unless you tear the entire thing down and start again. This isn’t a problem when building. You have all of the power, allowing you to personalize the building to your tastes. As long as it’s financially and physically possible, you as the homeowner have the final say in both the exterior structure and interior design of your home.
2. You Stake Your Claim
Likewise, you also have control over where that home gets built. You can’t stick a flag into any field and claim it as your own, but you can find available land that you like and stake your claim there. This isn’t an option when buying houses, instead, you must play Russian roulette with the local environment. A bad locale can ruin your house purchase, even if the house itself was up to your standards.
3. No competitive Buying Process
This won’t take much explaining since you’ve probably witnessed it for yourself. Sold houses get snapped up very quickly. Many of them barely last a month in the current housing market. If you’re building, not only is the land market more exclusive but once you’ve bought the land, you’re the sole, rightful owner. Nobody can outbuy you at that point, it’s all yours.
4. A More Modern Home
A home built today will have all the new technology. It’ll have the newest features worked into its design and will have been built to current building regulations. This can’t be said for older homes, making a bought home more likely to suffer from leaks or other costly damages in need of repair.
5. A More Efficient Home
In the same vein, a newly built home can be much more energy-efficient too. This is a great way to cut down the upkeep cost of the home since your energy bills will be cheaper, and it’s greener to boot. This can make building less costly in the long run, especially if it stays with your family for generations.
The Cons of Building a Home
Now for the downsides. If you’re going to build a home, keep these in mind and try to solve or mitigate these potential problems.
1. The Bill Is In Your Hands, Too
Sure, you may have all the power when you’re building a house, but you get all the costs too. Building is more expensive than buying, you knew that already, but the price differential can be ridiculous depending on the condition of the housing market. This won’t be much of a problem if money is no object but it’s something to keep in mind.
2. You Play The Waiting Game
Building takes time, so expect anything from six months to over a year before you step foot in your new home. This isn’t ideal for the impatient or those of you who need a home ASAP, and you’ll need to keep paying rent wherever you’re staying for this interim period.
3. So Many Negotiations
A construction project involves a lot of people, from the planners and architects to suppliers and contractors. Besides wanting your money, they’ll also want your input on many things. This means you’ll need to be around the site frequently and will have to negotiate and compromise to ensure that your vision is practical for the construction team’s ability.
4. You Might Not Be Alone
Unless you’re some rich eccentric building a fort in the hills, your home will be built near empty land for other homes. What does this mean? Noise pollution, as well as good old pollution pollution. Dust, dirt, smoke, and noise can surround the neighborhood from other construction projects, long after yours has finished. And yes, you did put other homeowners through the same when your home was being built.
5. You’ll Get Stressed
If the above points are any indication, building a home is stressful. It’s stressful for everyone but, if you can’t handle a lot of stress, perhaps having a home built isn’t the best option for you. Blowing a gasket or getting apathetic will only make for a subpar construction when the project is over.
