Hey, Kyle here winthehouseyoulove.com.
Today what I want to do is share with you a video from a good
friend of mine, Scott Smith.
So he just recently purchased a newly built home.
Now I know a lot of you are looking at purchasing a newly built home
instead of a preexisting one.
And I asked him to record a video, sharing his experience.
So the following is going to be Scott sharing his experience all the
way from the beginning to the end.
So you can hear from somebody who actually purchased a newly built home, what their
experience was like going through this.
Now in a future video, I'm going to break down some of the ins and outs
of buying a newly built home so you can navigate that process a little bit
easier, but first I wanted you to see the experience firsthand from Scott.
Hey, my name is Scott and Kyle asked me to send in a video just to kind of
talk through the process that my wife and I went through in building our first
home, a little backstory, my wife and I, have been married for 15 years and,
we started out renting homes, renting.
We actually rented an apartment.
Matter of fact, it was low income housing because I started out
in my career as a, as a school teacher, I was making, nothing.
My wife was still in college.
And, so we actually qualified for low income housing.
And we started there, a year into our marriage.
We had a family, that offered us to be able to rent their house for a year.
And we did that.
And then we had the opportunity to buy our first home a couple
of years into our marriage.
And, so we did that, and that was a great time.
We lived in that house for 13 years and it got to the point where we,
because we had our son and he was growing up and it was a small house.
It was a starter home, two bedrooms, one bath, I'm six foot three and, the ceilings
were so low in the house that I could literally palm the ceiling without even
having to extend my arm up and so we got to a place where even though we enjoy
the property, the location, where that house was at, we just needed a change.
We needed something different.
And so we started looking into just buying a home.
So we were looking at the housing market going on Zillow, you know, doing
the whole, the whole search and, in our area and our market, it was more
expensive to buy a home already done than it was to build a house here.
And we didn't know that we just assumed that building was
going to be way more expensive.
It's going to be out of our league.
And, and so we just were, you know, for probably a good nine months
to a year, just like, you know, occasionally checking Zillow.
And I was getting those daily emails and et cetera, trying to find things.
And what I found is like what we were looking for price-wise, it seemed
like we were going to pay a bunch of money and there was going to be
all kinds of like, it's just going to be a big project to deal with.
So we actually saw some developments in our areas.
Some builders we're building.
And so we stopped by, an open house one evening and we talked to the builder.
One of the reps, the sales reps for the builder.
And, we started to realize like, oh, building a house we're in the
same price range as what we were looking at with all these homes.
And then we get to, we get a brand new house.
We could get into it and enjoy it ourselves.
And so that's ultimately what we decided to end up doing.
And, we decided to go with a pre engineered house.
So the builder, basically what that means is that they already have
the house fully designed, basically everything comes in different
packages that you can select from.
And, and there's no like there's no real custom work at all.
Right.
It's just, here's these different packages.
And that has some pros and cons, the biggest thing for us was a custom built
home by a custom builder would have cost us about a hundred thousand dollars more
than what we paid for our current home.
So we just, for us a custom home is really just out of those,
out of the picture for us.
And to be honest with you, my wife and I really didn't even mind
the pre engineered package deal.
The benefits of that when we sat down with the salesperson,
we walked through the houses.
So here's like the different houses they had to offer.
We walked through those, and we very quickly said, yeah, this is
the house design that we want.
This is what meets our needs and then she literally walked us through step by step.
Like here's the options you have for the kitchen.
Here's the options you have for the flooring.
Here's the options you have for the outside.
And I think we fully designed that house picked out all the options
probably within an hour and a half.
My sister and her husband and family just recently built a custom home.
And it seemed like they were still having to make design choices, even
in the middle of the building process.
And so for us, my wife and I just living kind of the lives that we live,
we have a pretty busy work lives.
And we're making a lot of decisions.
And to be honest with you, we just wanted that process simple.
We weren't looking for crazy, like, like here's the thing the builder had
already designed the house in such a way that, where it worked, it made sense.
The flow made sense.
The designs, the colors, all of that stuff to us, we were like, yep.
That's what we would have chosen anyway.
So it made that process really, really easy to go that direction.
That's not for everybody.
That was, that was just for us.
There's some other kind of pros and cons.
We had options, but they were very limited.
So, it was very much like, you know, here's, here's like the, the
kitchen cabinet package and here's three different ones you can pick
from and you kind of go from there.
There was not like an option if we wanted to move a doorway somewhere
else like that, wasn't an option.
Matter of fact, early on in the process, I asked we got a basement on ours,
so it's something that we wanted.
So very early on in the process I asked, they had eight foot ceilings
in their basement and I said, will you guys do nine foot or 10 foot ceilings.
And they said, nope, they only do eight foot ceilings.
So I quickly realized like, okay, this isn't custom.
We were staying within their parameters, but that wasn't,
that wasn't terrible, for us.
The other thing about the, and this is true of, of anytime
you're building a home, but anything extra costs extra, right?
Like if you wanted another outlet that was going to be an extra charge.
Sometimes it felt like man to do something what seemed
basic seemed kind of expensive.
Like they would, they would charge quite a bit.
For instance, we were looking at having can LED lights put in the ceiling.
Those lights at any like Lowe's or Home Depot or something like that.
Our costs, they cost like $20 to $40, but it was going to be like $200 per light.
So like four lights was going to be $800, five lights is going to be a grand.
It just seemed like that expense added up really fast.
And so there were a number of things that we said, hey, this is maybe not critical.
And so we were just trying to save costs where we can.
A benefit though of the pre-packaged houses of that pre-design pre-engineered
house is that because their packages, a lot of times the builder is willing
to work deals that they'll call them incentives on certain things if you
build with them in a certain time period.
So, when we got in, it's kind of a long story.
I won't bore you with all of that.
But when we got in, we had the opportunity to take advantage
of an advantage where we got our basement completely finished by them.
So drywall, carpet, paint, like the whole deal, was able to be
completely finished by them.
And that was like a $20,000 savings where if this was a custom home
builder, typically, sometimes maybe they might, but typically they're
not going to be discounting a whole area of the house in that way.
So, that was kind of a nice incentive and they're willing to kind of
wheel and deal depending on where they're at in the build process.
Ours was one of the last houses on the lot.
That builder was eager to close out their, their lot and their development.
And so they were like wheeling and dealing to kind of get things done.
The big thing for us that for my wife and I, as we went into this is, and I think
this compared to other people that we've talked to that have been in the building
process recently, was, it seems like it's all about managing your expectations.
My wife and I honestly like our expectation was we just wanted a house
that was better than the one we were currently in which to be fair, like,
it was kind of setting a low bar.
But for us, we just like, we have nine foot ceilings in our house, so I can
literally just like walk through the house with my arms up because our last house
had like seven and a half foot ceilings.
Right.
And so it was those little things for us have made the world of difference.
A world of difference for us as we've just been able to enjoy the house.
You can't go into building a new house with the expectation that the whole house
is just going to be absolutely perfect.
No matter if you buy or you build, there's going to be issues.
There's going to be problems.
There's going to be things that aren't maybe finished a certain
way that you want it to be.
We have we found in that process that having a great relationship
with your general contractor.
That's the guy who's going to oversee the whole construction process on the ground.
It's the person who's managing the subcontractors, like the roofers
and electricians and drywall people.
That person building good rapport with them being in contact if
you have questions, ask them, we would come out to the job site
in the middle of construction.
And I've been around enough construction sites to know that the
construction site is not finished.
Right?
Like if they're in the middle of building, there's going to
be things that don't look right.
That look unfinished.
It is the general contractor's job to find those things, to see
those things and correct them.
In the middle of that build process.
And so, fortunately we got a great general contractor.
He was awesome to work with.
He would answer our questions.
We built in a weird time with the whole pandemic thing, so we
couldn't necessarily come into the house and come and go as we please.
But we were able to communicate with him and we felt like that worked really good
to make sure things were done correctly.
And, that our questions were answered.
There's going to be things even still, we find some things here and
there that maybe aren't perfect.
But for us, man, it's such our expectations were that
we just want a good home.
We know things aren't gonna be perfect, but we can enjoy.
What we have and so that's, you know, it's what you go into, you go the,
how you, what your expectations are going into a project like that, are
really, really key in terms of how you're going to experience the process.
as well as how you're going to experience the home afterwards.
We're really thankful to be able to have built.
We asked Kyle questions on financing, the side of things, and he was
super helpful with those, to kind of steer us in the right direction.
And, and it was, it was good.
We had a great experience.
We are enjoying the house.
We've been in it for a couple months now.
We love it.
Every night at dinner, we just say a prayer of gratefulness for what we get
to experience and enjoy, we've been able to have some friends over and really
be able to maximize the space well, and for us being in a space that's new,
that feels like ours from the start.
It doesn't feel like we have to undo what the previous owner had done to the space
to make it feel like ours is just a clean slate, was a great, great experience,
in terms of choosing to build over buy.
And again, our area, was, it was about the same price, if not cheaper to build.
Than it was to buy something that was already in existence in our market.
So, hopefully that was helpful for some of you who are looking at the building
processes and options for your next home.
You know, a lot of options out there, do your homework ask a lot of questions,
find a general contractor who will respond to you and communicate with you.
And, and I'm sure you will have an opportunity to love
your house as much as we have.
So thanks.