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Your observations about schools and crime answered your question.
On the other hand, new houses are always better because they are perfect and need zero work. And, they are uniquely spacious with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops.
The grass is always greener.
Um, this is sarcasm, right? There are ALWAYS bugs in any house, brand new or not. When we bought new construction many years ago, the roof started falling apart almost immediately (builder used cheap materials), the bannisters on the stairs didn't match each other, the driveway cracked within a few months of our move-in, and I got a quick education about "builder-grade" plumbing fixtures.
Yeah, you'll have the beloved granite, but it will be the most pedestrian grade, and those stainless steel appliances will look shiny, but guaranteed they'll be cheap crap. Ten - 17 years old is not exactly ancient. You will do a whole lot better buying in a great location in Neighborhood 1 and using any cash left over to install the showplace kitchen of your dreams.
Um, this is sarcasm, right? There are ALWAYS bugs in any house, brand new or not. When we bought new construction many years ago, the roof started falling apart almost immediately (builder used cheap materials), the bannisters on the stairs didn't match each other, the driveway cracked within a few months of our move-in, and I got a quick education about "builder-grade" plumbing fixtures.
Yeah, you'll have the beloved granite, but it will be the most pedestrian grade, and those stainless steel appliances will look shiny, but guaranteed they'll be cheap crap. Ten - 17 years old is not exactly ancient. You will do a whole lot better buying in a great location in Neighborhood 1 and using any cash left over to install the showplace kitchen of your dreams.
Our new house did not have any problems. As long as you don't count:
1. Thousands spent on water table, water disposal issues.
2. The hole in our living room right now which is directly below our master shower.
3. The $500 to replace bad parts on our window wall.
4. Replacing the dishwasher because the builder special was too noisy.
My parents had a house built and I don't recall any major problems, but I'm sure not everyone is that lucky. But if I could get new construction in the location AND price range that I want, I'd go that route regardless.
If you're going to go with a brand-new build, make sure the builder has a history and that you can look at other homes they've built. The only issues we've had with two brand new homes is minor patching from settling (nails shifting, etc; very normal occurrence.) My in-laws had a home built and they didn't have any major problems with it. New homes can be great but you need to look at the builders previous work to see how it's holding up.
I wouldn't hesitate to buy a brand new home again, but I would never buy new over used in order to live in an area with more crime and worse schools. Crime and school quality almost never improve with time and if they do, it's a period of many years.
Your observations about schools and crime answered your question.
On the other hand, new houses are always better because they are perfect and need zero work. And, they are uniquely spacious with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops.
The grass is always greener.
That has not been my experience. In the past I have lived in old houses. One turned 100 while I lived there. Here in Arizona I bought a house that was five years old. In the nine years I have owned it, it has cost me every bit as much as my old houses did — in replacement for product failures, not just esthetic choices of my own. Unless a buyer is working with a high-end contractor who is building them a custom home to specs of their choice, builders use crummy materials.
In the time I've lived in this house, I've had to replace light fixtures, two ceiling fans, every faucet, the kitchen sink, every single kitchen appliance (I had three service calls on the refrigerator before I finally gave up on it and then the others all broke down in short order), a toilet, the shower door, the AC compressor, the lock on the front door, several interior doorknobs, and towel holders that fell off the bathroom walls. The first time I washed a wall, the paint started to peel off. Since then I've repainted the entire interior.
The exterior had to be repainted by the time the house was ten years old. A brick patio extension was installed improperly and had to be rebuilt because it was causing rain water to drain toward the house, rather than away from it. But the thing that makes me maddest: the builder put five trees on this property. By Year 12 only one of them remained. One died when it was six years old, one fell over after it was about ten feet tall because it didn't grow a tap root, one was placed on a slope that caused it to grow tilted and after it got big it it obscured a stop sign and the HOA made me cut it down, one was planted too close to the block wall and its roots heaved and damaged the wall, so I had to have it removed. The one by the stop sign cost $200 to be removed. The one by the block wall cost me $700 including repairs to the wall.
That doesn't count the things the original owners had repaired under the builder's five-year warranty and things I changed just for matters of taste (for example, I replaced vinyl flooring with ceramic tile and changed the kitchen counters from laminate to quartz, and I upgraded the minimal back yard landscaping). And please note, this house wasn't built by a shlock builder with a bad reputation. This is just par for the course in home building these days.
Having a house built is way different than buying a newly built spec house. If you want a quality built new house, then pick the lot, pick the plans or have an architect/draftsperson draw them up and then pick a contractor to build it. Go through the materials list and make sure all the materials are quality. Go to the jobsite every day along with someone who knows construction and look at their work. That will get you a quality house, although it's a lot more work than just going to a few open houses and signing papers.
The contractors primary goal isn't to build a quality house, their primary goal is to make money. The end results from the differences in these two goals is huge and not in your favor. I knew one contractor who was on a mission to prove that females could build better houses than males, she had an all female crew and they built excellent houses. They even built houses at reasonable rates at the beginning. BUT, her primary goal was not to make money. When folks noticed the quality of their construction, all of a sudden, they were building really high end homes. She accidentally discovered that building quality will pay more than building to make money, but many builders never get to that point.
If it were my choice, I'd go with the older established neighborhood. You can always renovate if you want granite and stainless steel. Although the stainless will show every fingerprint that gets within two feet of it and the granite will crack every glass that tips over on it, but it looks nice.
Some of you have mentioned that new construction homes are built cheaply/poorly. Since I'm not looking at anything more than 20 years old, wouldn't those houses probably have been built cheaply/poorly also and now they're aging on top of that? If it weren't for the neighborhood issue, I don't see why the new construction wouldn't be the better option.
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Me? Sarcasm?
