buying a home bieing built by a builder -- any advice

[hillview]

We are looking at new builds with Toll Bros and Lennar and Pardee home builders. We have never done this before. So far here is what we have discovered
- you pay for your own pool and landscaping
- in some cases (Toll and Pardee) you can pay a lot (as much as 400k) to get the finish you might want
- it takes months to get the house (8-10 months)
- taxes are sometimes unclear or not disclosed obviously

Anyone had any experience or advice on doing this? Thanks!

[wendibird22]

We bought a new build. Thankfully it was a spec home that was 75% done and so many of the decisions had already been made for us. The reason it was a spec home was because the land owner wanted to get that parcel of his tax roll, building and lot purchasing had slowed, and so he asked a private builder to start building on it to get the lot to sell.

Anywho, yes, you are correct that EVERYTHING is extra. They are prepared to build you a base level home with base level finishes inside and out. Base level floors/carpet, base level cabinets, base level exterior finish, and often base level of colors of things...want a different color pay extra for it. You will also get a standard number of electrical outlets, cable outlets/phone jacks (if they even put those in anymore), light switches. If the standard is one double electrical outlet/plug on 2 of 4 walls in a room and you want one on each of the four walls or even multiples on each wall you will pay extra per outlet. Same for switches, etc.

In our area you only get the house. No driveway, no walkway, no lawn seeded, no landscape. You want those...yup, extra. You can pay the builder but they will then just contract that work out so you are probably better off contracting it directly yourself. And honestly, some advocate that you wait a year to do a driveway, walkway, any other exterior hardscaping to let the earth settle anyway. We did and ours has held up great. Our neighbor had their driveway and walkway put in at the time of their house build and have already had to have them replaced (about 3-5yrs after) because they've cracked and crumbled as the ground below settled.