Should you buy an existing home, or a brand new one? Depending on where you're looking or what your budget is, you may not have much choice in the matter, as we'll see below. But what are the pros and cons of each?
New homes accounted for just 10% of home sales in 2017, but the majority of home buyers say they would prefer a new construction house to an existing one if given the choice, according to a survey by the (admittedly partial) National Association of Home Builders.
Still, old homes do have some advantages—a main one being that, if they're still standing, they've so far passed the test of time. Homes from the beginning of the 20th century and earlier—before we deforested the landscape—were usually built with dense, mineral-packed old-growth timber, too, harvested from trees that were hundreds of years old. Compared to today's quickly grown timber, "The old lumber was much more rot resistant and less likely to twist and warp," says contractor Tim Carter, founder of AsktheBuilder.com.
That said, existing homes can be three or 300 years old, and not all old homes were built the same. Construction quality can suffer during a building boom, when increased demand for workers draws inexperienced new builders into the industry. Mike Resteghini of F.H. Perry Builder in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, saw that happen in the mid- to late-1980s. "Everybody and their brother was a builder, says Resteghini. "A real estate agent or attorney became a builder overnight to jump in the boom."
Of the contractors I spoke to, none had much good to say about homes built in the 1960s and '70s, either. Resteghini points to one client's home, built in the 1970s—"another dark age for construction," he says. There was so much wrong about the house that they couldn't do what the homeowner wanted; a structural engineer determined it couldn't be modified.
And of course, if you're the type to see or hear or sense spooky stuff, that's way more likely to happen in an old home where generations of owners have lived their lives. But, there's always the chance a real estate developer decided to build new homes right on top of a cemetery, too.
Hauntings aside, if you're on the fence between buying a new construction or existing home, here are some pros and cons of each:
from Apartment Therapy | Saving the world, one room at a time https://ift.tt/2xC1gDx
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