Upgrades (Howe: hardwood floors, how much, buying a home)

[DallasDream]

Iam sorry to ask this naive question as iam planning to buy a new home, so trying to understand some things.

while buying a home we know some standard feature which every builder gives when we talk about incentives or upgrade what is considered as upgrades or incentives can you give some examples.

[nsumner]

Upgrades vary from builder to builder. For some they put vynil flooring in all wet areas and ceramic tile would be an upgrade, for others, 3cm granite is standard etc. There is no particular rule. Just ask from the builder their list of standard features. That will show you what it comes with and if there is something that you want and it's not on there, then it's an upgrade.

However, you always are going to have a lot of upgrades on spec homes. Because builders put in the most popular items and at the end you don't have to pay the inflated price.

Naima

[DallasDream]

thanks Nsumner, but just one question why people have tought time at design center when selecting things as we know what standard features the home comes with.

[nsumner]

if they want to upgrade to things that are not standard, they go to the design center to choose them. For exemple they may want hardwood floors instead of carpet, they go to the design center to choose the type of wood.

Naima

[SouthernBelleInUtah]

My son and his wife are building a house. They had to go to the design center to choose the paint colors. Then the salesperson tries to suck you into the upgrades. It's hard to resist something "shiny and new" when faced with it!

[needsomeinfo]

in our experience, they do not tell you the price of the upgrades while you are looking at them. when we said, "we like this, how much would that be?" we were told "we don't work like that. we do it all at the same time at the end." the best we could get out of them were general ideas, such as oilr rubbed bronze fixtures were expensive, faux wood blinds were not. they did give us the upgrade "bill" at the end of our design sesssion.

honestly, I thought that method was a bit counterproductive, at least for us. we were on a limited budget for the upgrades, so we only upgraded our "must haves". I would have also liked different shelving (wood, not wire), etc. but did not ask because I knew they would not tell me how much it was going to be. I probably should have told them "yes", I wanted the nicer shevling, and then just taken it off at the end if it cost too much. live and learn.

[MurphyPl1]

Wow, I would not work with a builder like that. I still have my spreadsheet with the cost of each of our upgrades.

[nsumner]

Some builders don't have their own design center (company owned) so they have a 3rd party company that services several builders. They would have separate prices based on what the builder decides to price each item and based on how much that design center "decorator" can get you to spend. They have the prices in their computer but are either too lazy or can't figure out how to print today's prices. That is why they can't give you a definite price when you select a particular item. I hope that makes sense.

Naima