New Homes are available to consumers in many different ways. These range from undertaking an owner builder project, to hiring a builder to build your owne custom home, to reviewing a model home in a development and buying one of these modesl to be built by a tract builder on your behalf. Let’s briefly examine each of these options.
The most common way that consumers buy a new home is via the model home approach. An estimated 70% of all new homes are built by tract or production builders who use a model home approach as tool for selling the finished product to you. In these situations a large builder, like Toll Brothers, Hovnanian, Pulte, or Ryland to name a few, aquires an acreage, and subdivides the acreage into a number of buildable lots. A model home is then constructed, which is an example of the type of home will be built for purchasers of the lots in this particular subdivision.
Model homes are a great sales tool for these developers – and in fact are a great aid to consumers because they allow you – as the consumer an opportunity to see what the final product will look like. However, don’t be fooled, many of these model homes, as built and decorated, represent significant upgrades the basic model being offered and will cost many tens of thousands of dollars more than the standard models.
A second approach to new homes is building a custom home. As the term implies a custom homes allows you to customize each and every feature of the home to your satisfaction. You are not restricted to a specific floor plan or design. You can design your own plan or choose from one of the thousands available on the internet.
Custom builders are typically much smaller the product or tract buiders. Since they build few homes, they typically provide a better quality final product but, in general are more expensive than their production builder counterparts.
The last approach to building a new home is to do it yourself as an owner builder. This is not quite what it might seem at first glance. This approach doesn’t require you to do the building, though you can if you would like to….. What it does require you to do is to locate, hire and manage the specialty subcontractors, like electricians, plumbers, framers, etc who will do the actual building.
The attraction to this approach is two fold. The biggest is the money savings aspect. By eliminating the builder or general contractor, you can eliminate his markup – which commonly is in the range of 15%. On a average sized home this can save you tens of thousands of dollars. The second reason is control… You are in charge and control the process – not a builder.
Regardless of your approach to buying or building a new home, take the time to research all of the options and then choose the one that is right for you. The same process applies to finding the best home insurance quotes that suit your financial capability best.
There are a great many resources available to you on the WWW. Whether you are building a custom home, or buying a model home in a development, or doing a owner builder project, there are pleny of resources available to assist youw tih all of this different options.
Your preconstruction research should include the general area. Specifically you should consider things like, crime rate, quaity of schools, density of housing, taxes, proximity to empleyment and many, many other parameters.
Once you have narrowed down an area, you then need to look at the specific characteristics of land or lots of interest. Such things to consider might be light and noise pollution, grade or steepness of the lot, next door neighbors, fitness for your houseplan, amount number of exisiting trees to name a few.
Of course the other big item in your preconstruction home building project, is your house design. How many bedrooms, bathrooms. two story vs. single story, open floor plans vs. closed, type of foundation (basement vs. slab), size and amenities in the kitchen, family room. Will it have a great room? What about a rec room. The number or questions and considerations are very large.