Look at three or four resale homes during your house hunt and you’ll start getting the feeling that, should you purchase one of them, you will be buying someone else’s poor design ideas, lousy home maintenance and lack of cleanliness. Yuck.
It’s for this reason that many homebuyers choose a newly constructed home instead. Yes, they typically sell for more per square foot, but the extra money is worth the extras that come along with a new house. Let’s take a look at three reasons you may want to choose a new home over a resale.
1. Energy Efficiency
It’s a fact that energy efficient features lower your monthly utility bills. Many of today’s new homes are rated by the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET), which assigns each home a score. This score is readily available to homebuyers to use when comparing the energy efficiency of homes.
In addition to the money-saving aspect an energy-efficient home provides, resale values are higher. According to Zillow’s Housing Trends Report, nearly half of homebuyers say that energy efficiency is a desirable feature in a home.
In fact, according to another major real estate conglomerate’s studies, homes with energy efficient features sell for 7 percent more than homes that lack these features.
2. Fewer Headaches
Why purchase a home that needs new paint, carpet, cabinets, appliances and flooring? In a newly-constructed home everything is new. Everything is clean. No nasty grease smells, pet odors, scuffed up baseboards or well-worn floors.
Shoddy home maintenance isn’t a concern either because the home is brand new. Then, many homebuilders will supply you with a one-year home warranty, especially if you ask for it. That kind of peace of mind is priceless.
3. The Opportunity to Customize
The ability to take a blank slate and impose one’s personal tastes onto it is the biggest reason many buyers choose a new home over an existing one.
Some of the customization features that you may be able to choose include:
- Location – often, you’ll pick which lot in the community you want to live on.
- Flow – if you purchase before the home is built you may be able to dictate where the bathroom is located or ask that the laundry room be built upstairs instead of downstairs.
- Design features – from wall color to flooring to cabinetry, you’ll be making a lot of personalized decision when you purchase a new home.
Buying a newly constructed home is a buyer-centered experience. As experienced new home buyer representatives, we are happy to walk you through every step of the process to ensure you get the home of your dreams.
Alex Saenger and the Saenger Group are Top 1% Maryland Real Estate Agents serving the Washington DC Metro area. We are licensed Realtors based in Rockville, MD at Keller Williams Capital Properties.
