Building a KB Home

[manders311]

joe123456,
Wow! Thanks for making me feel better! Your house sounds beautiful! Is this in the DFW area?

[joe123456]

I had the home built in San Antonio.

The downside to putting so much money into my home to build it "right" is that my home will be difficult to sell because it will be the most expensive home in the subdivision. Alot of things I did during construction that might or might not add significant value when compared to the other homes in the community i.e. how do you put a price on the home being pre-wired with outlets that contain 2 fiber optics strands, 2cat5e, & 2 RG6 runs? Hurricane ties on the roof rafters? $1000K in bathroom/laundry room fans? Whole house surge protector wired to the main electrical box? Fresh air intake? Variable speed blower? Hurricane glass skylight?

A home appraisal specialist probably won't give much value to everything I have done. They will pull down a comparable listing of homes and come up with a figure.

I read in another forum that most people won't pay for quality and wouldn't know it if they were staring at it 6" from their face. I built the home to live in it for a long time. I don't plan on selling anytime soon.

However, an added benefit to living in tract home that is "decked" out is that I am paying property taxes on a standard tract home. In TX the tax savings covers my utility bills.

[Trainwreck20]

The good thing is like I said, you are getting more house. From there you have to buy a KB home with ZERO upgrades and then do the upgrades yourself or hire a good craftsman to do it.

My BIL (a finance guy) did something very similar to this. He bought a KB home with basically no upgrades outside of SA and then has spend the next ten years slowly upgrading. He did not hire contractors, he has kids instead . They have done full bathroom remodels, put in tile, replaced all sorts of hardware and fixtures, and I don't know what all else. It is a beautiful home now, and he made his improvements when the time was right - he always buys something when it is on some rediculous sale. I wouldn't have the patience or restraint, but for him it worked great.

There were a couple 'huh' moments over the years - when they redid the bathroom, it was because KB had glue the shower tile directly to standard sheetrock. Also, they doors were not perfectly squared in a couple places and that required some planer work....

[joe123456]

Yes, that is the way to do it. Buy things on the cheap and update your basic home. I paid 50% less on my appliances then the regular prices at LOWES and HD. I negotiated and bought their floor models and then took the rebates...6K in appliances cost me less than 3K. Bamboo and laminate flooring were bought at COSTCO while on sale. Bundled CAT5E RG6 and fiberoptics were bought online $600 500ft. But all of the little things just still added up to over 50K. Not to mention the furniture that is needed to fill the space of a larger home. Well all said and done to include furniture still under 300K, but way over the 204K price paid for the home.

I notice that most people buy a 300K+ home but never do the upgrades to make it nice like woodwork, light fixtures, ceiling medallions, etc. They also fail to furnish the home. I bought a well built shell and 300K later have a fantastic home that is fully furnished and doesn't look no where like the tract home I purchased.

[scgraham]

While I can't speak about this KB Home community, I can say, however, that my dealings with KB Home on a few transactions in another area over the years have been mostly positive when compared to some other home builders. To me, KB Home delivers a clean end product. I have handled approximately + - 100 new home transactions over the years; the KB Home dealings seem to stand out in my mind as some of the better ones.

[tejano2828]

Well I have a KB Home and my sister has an expensive Home in the 281 1604 area near evans road by some fancy builder and her home has many many problems. My home 6 years and I couldn't be happier. Our home is energy star effecient 3000 square feet-beautiful on the inside with wooden floors. During the summer keeping it at 78 the house is very cool in every room and so far this summer our light bill has just topped 105 dollars this past month. My advice: Don't be cheap when it comes to building materials, get large restrooms, if you do have problems notify kb home early to fix the problems and for God's sake Paint your house on the inside I mean paints not that expensive, you'de be surprised how beautiful a home looks with colored paint instead of bland white walls. And please don't start posting the KB horror stories so I can hear about it, already heard and all I can say is I'm happy and so are all my neighbors. Bought the house at 158k and a check on housing almanac has the homes on my size on this street at 199k, not too shabby. And our neighbors 3 doors down just sold their home for 180k smaller than mine. Here's another advice for KB Homes, get all around brick and don't be a cheappie!!