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Plenty of 15yo homes out there have been properly maintained and should not need any more repairs than a new home.
Plenty of brand-new homes have issues almost immediately that will require repair. Especially those that are slapped together quickly like a DR Horton box.
You never know. Buying a house new is no guarantee against repairs. One should assume home ownership will include repair work.
There is warranty but I think that most of what people are complaining about with regard to the newer tract homes is poorer build quality and/or cheaper materials than found in the similarly priced older custom homes. Items that might not need warranty attention but might have an overall shorter life span than better materials.
Here is a "home warranty" in a nutshell.
You will do a walk thru at 30 days and another before 1 year as passed. The primary focus of both of these is drywall issues-nail pops, settling cracks, and the like-maybe the carpets get stretched. Most of the other things that can fail in a home during the first year are things that a builder can and will deflect onto the vendor/manufacturer/supplier.
You will also have a 10 year warranty against catastrophic structural problems that are unlikely.
What is likely is that the house will wear poorly over those 10 years. You can walk into a custom home and dislike the finishes, but the house itself will be of better quality. If you or a future owner ever get to the point
where you gut a room down to the studs like they love to do on TV, what you will find behind the drywall will be better construction.
The two primary costs of building a home from a plan are materials and labor. Tract builders have necessarily become very good at squeezing as much cost as they can out of those two things to enhance their margin and offset the increasingly high cost of land, especially in locations like NW Cary. Those concerns simply were not the same during the first building boom in 27519 from 2001 until the 2008 financial meltdown. In 2003, a 1/3 acre treed lot on the nicest street in Cary Park cost a builder $75-80K. Today, a .18 acre lot in the middle of a field in Southerlyn costs over twice that amount. Materials costs are drastically different. The appearance level of today's level 1 finishes are designed to mimic features in custom homes, so they use those design elements but with low-end materials. If you educate yourself as to what to look for, it is very easy to see what I am talking about.
You never know. Buying a house new is no guarantee against repairs. One should assume home ownership will include repair work.
I learned to do repairs because I bought a 1936 home in 1999 that cost me $175 per square foot and I was pretty much broke when we walked out of that closing. I am glad I had that experience because I can handle a lot of things myself. I also got a close look at how a house is put together, so I am extra sensitive to shoddy construction and materials. Over the years I have walked thru just about every new development in NW Cary and have seen a steady decline in how the homes are put together. This has happened as the area became hotter and hotter and land became scarcer and way more costly. Combine this with a generation of homeowners who think buying new absolves them of maintenance, and it's going to get interesting in 10 years when these homes start to show their age.
I Combine this with a generation of homeowners who think buying new absolves them of maintenance, and it's going to get interesting in 10 years when these homes start to show their age.
As those of us who are old enough to have bought in the 90s (and earlier) can attest that 10 years goes by FAST.
Here is a "home warranty" in a nutshell.
You will do a walk thru at 30 days and another before 1 year as passed. The primary focus of both of these is drywall issues-nail pops, settling cracks, and the like-maybe the carpets get stretched. Most of the other things that can fail in a home during the first year are things that a builder can and will deflect onto the vendor/manufacturer/supplier.
You will also have a 10 year warranty against catastrophic structural problems that are unlikely.
What is likely is that the house will wear poorly over those 10 years. You can walk into a custom home and dislike the finishes, but the house itself will be of better quality. If you or a future owner ever get to the point
where you gut a room down to the studs like they love to do on TV, what you will find behind the drywall will be better construction.
The two primary costs of building a home from a plan are materials and labor. Tract builders have necessarily become very good at squeezing as much cost as they can out of those two things to enhance their margin and offset the increasingly high cost of land, especially in locations like NW Cary. Those concerns simply were not the same during the first building boom in 27519 from 2001 until the 2008 financial meltdown. In 2003, a 1/3 acre treed lot on the nicest street in Cary Park cost a builder $75-80K. Today, a .18 acre lot in the middle of a field in Southerlyn costs over twice that amount. Materials costs are drastically different. The appearance level of today's level 1 finishes are designed to mimic features in custom homes, so they use those design elements but with low-end materials. If you educate yourself as to what to look for, it is very easy to see what I am talking about.
Thanks for the info. Yes, I totally understand the differences between tract and custom homes, no question about that. I was simply responding to RedZin regarding immediate repairs which, like you said, warranty would cover. Nothing about how it'll look years from now.
As pointed out earlier, there's a chance we'll likely continue to see the increase in land values in this area, so either the house price will keep rising, or build quality will keep falling down, or both.
If everyone can find a nice resale custom home at the location they like at the time they want, plus the renovation costs, etc. to make it the way they love; and still end up spending the comparable amount, or even a bit more than tract homes; I'm sure tract home builders will be out of business as there's no reason to buy them (well maybe warranty).
I live in "the 27519," in an older, established 'hood, and always joke that if a developer bought my land today, she'd build 3 houses on it. I've built new homes twice, and purchased my current home as a 10-year-old resale, and I've had (comparatively) fewer problems with it, owing to its "good bones." We've added and renovated over the years, but didn't expect our home to be fully-formed (in terms of features and finishes) when we purchased it several years ago.
Purchase the tree, not the nest, or so I've been told.
Thanks for the info. Yes, I totally understand the differences between tract and custom homes, no question about that. I was simply responding to RedZin regarding immediate repairs which, like you said, warranty would cover. Nothing about how it'll look years from now.
As pointed out earlier, there's a chance we'll likely continue to see the increase in land values in this area, so either the house price will keep rising, or build quality will keep falling down, or both.
If everyone can find a nice resale custom home at the location they like at the time they want, plus the renovation costs, etc. to make it the way they love; and still end up spending the comparable amount, or even a bit more than tract homes; I'm sure tract home builders will be out of business as there's no reason to buy them (well maybe warranty).
Yes and No...
Some people are ready to pay a premium to have brand new stuff, irrelevant of warranty. I do not think there is anything wrong with it. Look at the car market, you do pay a premium for a brand new car compare to a one year old car that is still under warranty. Now, a buyer buying a brand new home vs a resale with such pricing/quality difference should do her or his due diligence on which kind of premium she or he is ready to pay to get something brand new. For the due diligence, I would advice to not take into account very low probability events such as finding gold on the lot, or any other BS like that. However, pricing a replacement of engineering wood floor vs resurfacing a hardwood floor at time of resale or replacing kitchen cabinet vs repainting them. Those items I believe are much more probable in 10 to 20 years than finding oil, gold, or pirate treasures in your soil. One last advice, to get a correct idea about price, you can multiply the probability of an event by the cost of it. I would argue doing something about the carpet, hardwood, kitchen after 10/20 years should be close to 90% (multiply by 0.9). Finding oil should be close to winning the lottery that is close to 0% (multiply by 0).
Thanks for the info. Yes, I totally understand the differences between tract and custom homes, no question about that. I was simply responding to RedZin regarding immediate repairs which, like you said, warranty would cover. Nothing about how it'll look years from now.
As pointed out earlier, there's a chance we'll likely continue to see the increase in land values in this area, so either the house price will keep rising, or build quality will keep falling down, or both.
If everyone can find a nice resale custom home at the location they like at the time they want, plus the renovation costs, etc. to make it the way they love; and still end up spending the comparable amount, or even a bit more than tract homes; I'm sure tract home builders will be out of business as there's no reason to buy them (well maybe warranty).
All a warranty guarantees you is that within the first year, the builder is supposed to fix any screw ups.
Yes, you are covered for MAJOR issues by some types of warranties that come with a new home, but plenty of resales have warranted MAJOR stuff like hot water heaters, new roofs, etc.
So, really, it's all a "I want it new" or "I don't like those fixtures" issue and that stuff can be so easy to fix.
The rate of building around here is nuts.
It would bother me less if these tract builds were coming at a lower cost to satisfy a market segment, but some of this absolute garbage is marketed in the same price range as true custom or even semi-custom stuff built by custom builders.
I find that weird. Why buy something so lousy for so much money unless you have NO other option?
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