Everybody has their own idea of what the perfect home is. For some it can be one that was already built and has all the features that they are happy with. Others want complete customization and everything done according to their list of must haves.
Which one is best is really up to the individual. There are a lot of things to consider with each type of home purchase that need to be thought out in detail. After all, a house is usually the biggest purchase you will make in your lifetime.
Luckily, assuming you decide to buy a brand new construction there are a lot of options if you don’t have too many prerequisites that are hard to find. But for now, we’ll leave that aside and focus on the differences between buying an older home vs building a custom one.
Buying an existing home
The main reason for buying an existing home over having one built is the cost. It costs a lot more to build than to buy. But that cost is not just in terms of the actual build. It has to do with a lot of factors.
Of course, you can actually spend more money on an existing house by doing a lot of maintenance or just picking the nicest house in the most exclusive neighborhood you can find.
Location plays a major part in your choice as well. You may have your sights set on a certain neighborhood, for instance. It could be close to schools for your kids. Or, maybe your work place is nearby so you can have a shorter commute. There are a lot of reasons why you would be dead set on a particular area. If this is the case then there are few possibilities to build out a new construction. In many scenarios you will have to buy a house to then tear it down and build new in its place. This is an economic and logistical nightmare for many people.
Even when you don’t have a favorite area, you do also have more choice when it comes to buying rather than building. Once you get a pre-approval from the bank, you can shop around with a solid figure in mind until you find the house that ticks most of your boxes.
We say most because this is the potential downside of buying an existing home. You will never get everything that you want. Often, it is a game of weighing what you can live with vs what you can’t. And always with the understanding that you will at some point have to spend money to get the house exactly how you want it.
Then, there is the case that you can always flip the house. After living there for a few years your needs may change or you can’t resist the stratospheric value of the house and decide to cash in. This is not what somebody building a house typically does. A newly built house is usually a house for life with no plans to eventually move on.>
One last benefit is the timing of when you buy. Buying an existing home means that you can move in as soon as the papers pass the bank. In most cases this is less than a couple of months. You may have to wait a little while to move in depending on how much work is needed to modernize the house to your standards, but the timing is usually very quick from when you sign the purchase agreement to when you move in.
Building new
The most obvious benefit of building a new home from scratch is that you have complete control over the features. Whatever creature comfort you have in mind can be done as you have a blank slate. Of course, this also comes with a price. The more requirements you have that need customization the more money it will cost.
Easy builds in which the house is already prefabricated are much easier and cost far less, but many people build with the express need to customize. Though, there are a lot of choices when it comes to prefab houses so you may find exactly what you are looking for anyway without the need to customize.
Another big advantage is that a new build is going to use more environmentally friendly materials. This is good for the planet but also your wallet. Modern materials are very energy efficient and can end up being very passive when it comes to resources it needs to heat or cool itself.
Even the position of the house can be done in such a way to maximize efficiency. If you are in a rural area where the outline of the house is not constricted by the size and layout of the plot then you have free reign and can make it energy efficient.
Where you can build a new house is one of the downsides. There are some areas that may not be close enough to the municipal services to get water, sewer and internet. In this case you have to improvise and this can be complicated. The flip side of the coin is that you build in a more developed area that is close to the services that you need, but then you are limited in terms of customization. Certain local regulations may limit some of the ideas you had in mind that are not possible.
Yet one more potential downside is the timing of the build. It can take a long time to get permits and then schedule the work to get done. If you have to time the sale of your home to the completion of the build then this can get very tricky. In fact, some people may use the proceeds of their home sale to start the build and end up living in a container on site while it gets built since they effectively have no place to live.
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