Building a Home Vs. Buying a Home

[Fishindude77]

I'm a life long builder and I'd almost always rather buy and remodel to suit, rather than build from scratch. I like old homes that used good solid building materials; real masonry, plank or plywood rather than OSB, copper plumbing, etc. Most new homes are built pretty lightweight and cheap in my opinion.

Also, most of the really good home building sites were taken a long time ago. Many old homes are built on really good sites with good views, big yards, drainage sloping away, etc. and all of the trees and landscaping is already mature and looks good.

[snafu]

The decision leans very heavily on your skill set and time factor. Our 1st home was yet to be built in a new district by a firm with an 'excellent' BBB reputation. We picked the model and had an endless list of choices. Once the basement was poured, we tried to get to the site weekly. Our knowledge was minimal but we could see obvious errors regularly. I was pretty surprised it made city inspector approval. Any changes, no matter how tiny, added to cost. It ran late and circumstances beyond our control had us sell it before occupancy.

Since, we buy a houses at least 5 years old having been on site for each inspection by a trained, licensed inspector. I ignore paint, decor and appliances as those are a cheap, easy fix. I concentrate on location, services I use. 2nd, layout like how easy to bring in 5 bags of groceries and put away. I examine what visitors see and their comfort level at entry. Route to W/D & put away. One big issue is how to manage activities of teenagers. I like easy to care for landscaping and good access/egress from garage and driveway. I always call police services for neighborhood issues and insurance agents for number of claims.

[disneysteve]

I just want to point out that this thread is over 11 years old! It was dredged up by a new necroposter (I thought we had blocked that ability but apparently not). The conversation might still be relevant to the new people posting but the OP is long gone.