Hi everybody, my name’s Lance Mohr and I’m a real estate agent in the Tampa Bay area.
I’m doing this video series because I really want to help you, the home buyer, with buying
a new home.
There’s a lot of people that think buying a new home is very similar to buying a pre-owned
home, and that’s completely not the case.
They’re completely different.
One is, on a pre-owned home you’re dealing with the decision maker, you’re dealing
with the person who owns the home that can make a decision.
On a new home, you’re dealing with huge corporations, and they deal and work much,
much different than you might expect.
So, today, what I want to do is I want to go over the advantages and disadvantages of
buying a new home.
The first is, everything has pros and cons.
A lot of times when you’re buying a pre-owned home, you go out and you have to settle for
things.
So maybe you love the area, you love the floor plan, you love everything about the home,
but you don’t want oak cabinetry.
You might want maple or maybe you want espresso cabinetry.
Maybe you want different countertops.
And it’s not a big deal because this is all cosmetic stuff; you can’t worry about
that as long as you like the area, the lot location, the elevation and the floor plan.
You can change all of that.
But, with the pre-owned home, you have to live with what you’ve bought, unless you
want to spend money to change it.
With brand new, you basically get to pick everything, depending on what stage of the
process the new home is in.
If you buy it from scratch, you could pick your own lot, you could pick your colors,
your cabinets, your countertops, your flooring, everything.
Generally if it’s an inventory home and it’s complete or near complete, the builder’s
selected very neutral and modern colors, and everything’s up to date.
It’s not tile that’s 8 years old or 15 years old.
The other thing you have to look at is, with a pre-owned home, the benefit is you drive
out to the neighborhood and you can see all of the homes.
Everything’s complete.
You could talk to the neighbors and you could drive around the street.
But, with a new home, that may not be the case, depending on what process you buy the
new home in.
So, there’s different processes.
You could go out and look at a new home, and there may be just the model home and a couple
of other homes built.
Or maybe it’s just dirt.
Or you could go out and the subdivision might be half complete.
Or maybe you go out the subdivision’s almost virtually complete but with a few homes left.
When it’s complete or virtually complete, you have a good sense for what the community’s
going to be like, but what happens if you go out and you’re one of the first people
to buy a home out there.
Do you really know what the community’s going to be like?
So, here’s a tip; here’s what you do.
You go to the builder representative or real estate agent and you find out where a similar
community to this community is that they built.
That way you could go out and take a look at what that community looks like, and you’re
going to have a good representation of what the new community’s going to look like.
The second thing you could do is find out who’s actually building the home.
Who’s the superintendent?
Maybe Bill’s the superintendent.
Find out where Bill built before, see what subdivision he built in, and go out and check
it out.
Look at the homes.
Knock on the doors.
Talk to the neighbors; see what they thought about that builder.
See what they thought about Bill, and get some insight.
Now, let me tell you, some people say, I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to bug people,
I don’t want to inconvenience people.
Well let me tell you this: People love talking about their homes.
So if you go out and talk to Jim and Mary, and they absolutely had a great process, they’re
going to love talking about that process.
And if they had a bad process, you better believe they’re going to want to tell everybody
they know about what a horrible process it was and why.
Sometimes you have to take things with a grain of salt, if you do do that.
But I do recommend it.
And the last thing you have to think about is, a lot of people will say to me, Lance,
I don’t want to buy a new home because the new home’s more expensive, I can get a pre-owned
home, it might be $20,000 less.
Well, maybe, but there’s a difference between price and cost.
And here’s what I mean.
When you’re dealing with price, you’re only talking about the purchase price of the
home.
But when you’re dealing with cost, you’re talking about the price, you’re talking
about the utility bills, and you’re talking about the maintenance of the home.
The beauty about a brand new home is the maintenance is zero.
You don’t have to worry about moving in and in 3-10 years you’re going to have to
replace the roof or you’re going to have to replace the HVAC system in a year, or other
things that go wrong.
Everything’s brand new.
But, moreover, a real big benefit is over the years consistently things have been getting
greener and greener.
In other words, the energy efficient ratings has been getting better and better.
For example, you could take a home built by a builder today and let’s say its 2800 sq.
ft.
The average homer utility cost in the summer may be $160 a month.
But that same home, sq. ft. wise, built in 1995, is double.
And let’s just say it’s 10 years older; it’s built in 2005.
You’re still going to have substantially higher utility costs.
So these are things you need to look at.
It’s just not always about the price, but it’s about the price and the cost.
Moreover, the cost.
I hope this helped you.
I hope it gets you to start thinking about the new home process in a little different
way than you might be thinking about it right now.
If you have any real estate questions, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email.
I’ve sold hundreds upon hundreds of new homes.
I’ve been in the Tampa real estate business for years and it’s really a passion of mine.
Look, any real estate agent can put me in the car and show you new homes.
But really it’s the understanding of the components, and that’s why I’ve put this
video series together.
So, don’t hesitate.
If you have any questions at all, click the link below and send me an email or give me
a phone call.
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I wish you the best of luck.
Have a wonderful day and, hopefully, I’ll be talking to you.