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Model Home Mirages

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August 13, 2015
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Model homes are always fun. They are beautiful and exciting, but honestly, they tell you nothing about the builder and their quality. You cannot compare your finished product to their model home. If you do fall in love with a model home, ask how many upgrades were put into the house. This will also tell you something about the culture of the builder. If they are selling a $350K house with another $350K of upgrades in the model home, most likely they are crooks. Haha no, that’s extreme, but they are definitely pulling a bit of a bait and switch.

You can look at the fit and finishes of the model home, but pay more attention to the floor plan and if it suits all of your structural needs. If it does, check to see if the builder has anything in inventory. Even if it is not the floorplan you are in love with, check out an inventory home, because it will give you a glimpse into their finish quality. Do they have sloppy paint jobs? Do they hang the doors straight? Is the tiling messy and uneven? Is the sealant around the plumbing a mess? That is the first thing. Is the quality any good? Because of course the quality of the model home is going to be immaculate. But the quality of an inventory home will reveal the truth.

The next thing you can check out in an inventory home is how nicely did they do upgrades? Most inventory homes will have a medium amount of upgrades because they want to make it desirable but not to have to overprice and then drop the price and make all the upgrades free to the buyer. So, how well did they choose their upgrades? Did they put any wood flooring in? If so, what is the quality? What does the standard lighting package look like? What about standard plumbing fixtures? Are they good enough for you? Or are you going to want to upgrade them when you build your own?

Now that you have browsed some of the inventory, how do you feel about the house? Do you still feel like they are a quality builder who are going to give you the house of your dreams? Or do you feel like you are going to have to pay double the starting price in upgrades just to get it how you want?

in home

Build vs Build

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August 12, 2015
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If you are reading this to figure out whether you should build or buy your first new home, this is not going to be very helpful to you. My husband, Tommy, and I decided to build for many reasons and honestly didn’t even think about buying. I grew up in southwest Houston where building is commonplace, affordable, and relatively easy. My parents built their house from scratch and it has always been a dream of mine. So in the build vs buy stage of our journey, we had extremely selective hearing and we pretty much skipped that stage altogether and went with build.

I am not going to make an even argument here. I’m not going to list the pros and cons because what would be the point of that after I already made my choice. I’m just going to list all the good things about building your own house:

1.) It’s brand new. That’s right. No one has ever lived in it before. No smokers who insist that they have kept everything odorless. No cats who “never claw at the carpet”. No murderers whose wives “made them do it”.

2.) It’s your perfect home. You don’t have to settle for a granite countertop that is too dark. You get to pick the exact one you want. You get to pick the lighting, the floors, the fixtures, the paint, the brick, everything.

3.) It’s fun! The whole process is something that many people never get to do. You’ll get to pick out your plot of land and watch your house grow from just a slab of concrete into what you will call your home. Picking tiles is fun guys! Right? Yea!

I’m sure there are some equally good reasons to buy instead. So if that’s what you did then good for you!