Today is Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday, Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday…and my dad’s birthday! (Hint: he’s not 200.) So happy birthday Dad. A belated happy birthday to my mom as well. Hers was Monday, but I didn’t have a chance to say that until now because the past three days have been crazy busy.
Today, however, I have no sims. And though I love sims, I am looking forward to a day without one. Feel free to remind me of this in a couple weeks when I start complaining again about how I have no sims.
But onward.
To continue the wild swing of my life from “we’re moving to DC” to “we’re staying in Houston,” you can now add “we’re looking for a house.” Yep, a house. To be honest, I could have probably bought a house years ago, thanks to the incredibly cheap real estate available in suburban Houston, but there was always a nagging “but I might leave” thought in the back of my mind. Yet the decision to stay here is feeling pretty permanent, at least for the next 5-10 years, and my upstairs neighbors are getting more and more annoying with their stomping and their music and their loud breakups with girlfriends.
Ok, so that might not be the best reason to buy a house. The point is that we are looking. Last weekend Jose and I drove all over the Clear Lake area to ooh and aah at various model homes. The housing market in Houston never really got out of control like it did in other parts of the country, and there is still a lot of new construction going on. While I hadn’t really considered building a house until now, it is starting to seem like a very appealing option.
First, the idea of getting to pick my floor plan, pick all the options inside and out, and watch my house actually being constructed from the ground up is very appealing. Second, the timeline if we build is awesome. We can start the process now for very little money down, and we don’t have to spend weeks or months looking (which we might, as I’m pretty picky). On top of that, we have more time to add to the downpayment we’ve already saved, and we don’t have to deal with trying to move prior to the wedding. So I’m seeing very little downside to the idea of building.
That said, I welcome comments and advice from anyone who has done this before. There are dozens of different builders, and I have no idea how to determine which ones are better than the rest. Also, while I’ll be great at choosing cabinets and tile, I don’t know many specifics about what to look for in the actual construction of the house — foundation, structure, plumbing, windows, and all that.
It’s overwhelming. But so exciting!
Building from the ground up is fun (mostly). And right now, because it is so slow, houses are going up crazy fast when someone does sign on the bottom line.
The toughest part is picking the options. The advice is to do the Master Bath and Kitchen first because you will quickly run out of your alloted funds. Trust me on this.
The key to picking options is to understand what you can do (and feel comfortable doing) “after the fact.” For example, if you think you can handle trading out bathroom fixtures, it’s cheaper to buy exactly what you want and do it yourself, rather than pay their prices. Another example is that we could have bought a brand new set of appliances for what they wanted to charge to upgrade from the standard appliances.
We had our first house built for all the reasons you mentioned – less money down, getting to pick everything out myself, getting to write our initials in the sidewalk in front of our house….
Then the deal with the second house was we weren’t even looking. But I had 2 houses in the neighborhood that I always said “if that house ever goes up for sale, it’s mine”. And guess what? That’s right – one of them went up for sale.
Turns out it had been on the market for months. And months. And months. And had several contracts fall through. Desperate sellers, great price.
And…the current owners were the original builders. And…just so happens his first career was an engineer (think perfection everywhere), and his “retirement career” was a home inspector. Translated, that means this house was custom built based on his experience of everything he liked, and didn’t like, in all the homes he had inspected for the past 10 years.
Okay, I love this house. I never thought I’d love living in a house that we didn’t build, but in both cases – building new, and then buying from a desperate seller in a pre-existing home – both were the right decision for us at those particular times.
one problem i’ve heard from people who built or were the first owners is that you have to deal with all the mistakes/shortcuts that the builder makes. i would get lots of references for builders, but you still are going to have to deal with a bunch of little things. Those things are covered by the first year warranty, but it is still a huge pain in the butt to deal with.
Also, my opinion of newly build homes in vast developments is that builders take a lot of short cuts and use pretty cheap materials. You just have to be careful.
Well, you know my advice is don’t buy a house, with an appreciation of 3% even in houston’s “boom” years and property tax bills+home owners insurance of 5%, its pretty much a losing deal for anyone who can do the math. Not to mention 3% closing costs to buy and 6% to sell. After 5 years, my downpayment would still have made more money in a savings account than in a house, even assuming paying $1000 per month in rent. Rent a house from a friendly landlord, it will be cheaper than thte last mortgage payment (you’ll only be building about $100-200 a month in equity for the first few years.. the rest of your mortgage payment will be interest)
Definitely find a way to milk that $15000 from the government if the tax credit passes.
New is awesome. Get a killer detailed home inspector and don’t close on the house until they fix every single thing he finds, no exceptions. Visit the house while they are building — make sure the concrete subfloor is level, make sure they put the roof on right, make sure there is no patching in the dry wall, make sure they clean the floor before they put the carpets down, if you don’t know how these things are supposed to look, ask someone.
Be careful about paying for upgrades, you will need to pay for some, but some are far cheaper as DIY after you purchase the house.
Find a neighborhood that will be closed out before you plan on selling your house. Remember your psychology buying a new house. Its the same type of people who will be buying your house from you — deciding to either buy your house or construct new. If there’s new con
struction a few blocks away, they’ll pick that.
Christina, all neighborhoods in houston are vast with builders take shotty shortcuts. the older pre-development style houses are either in the midst of trailer parks (no zoning) or are rotting from mold and water damage or are out of price range. Basically when you buy a house, new or use, you need to budget replacing it piece by piece until the day you move out.
Your dad has the best birthdate ever! LOL!
Whether you buy or build, I recommend saving up so you have 20% down when you buy. You either have to get private mortgage insurance or take out a second loan if you don’t have 20% down, and it ends up costing quite a bit more. With you and Jose it probably wouldn’t take too long to save up a good amount, just put one of your salaries towards it and live on the other. (It may involve *some* sacrifice like eating in more and buying a few less things over the year). I really wish Joel and I had waited until we had more money to put down but we got overexcited and ended up paying more. So that’s my advice. Be patient, save up, then you can build or buy and already have 20% down and not have to worry about the interest on a second loan or PMI.