Building vs. Buying — DON’T SETTLE!

NOTE: The following is a fictional narrative that has been dramatized for your enjoyment.

I watched in horror as the carton of eggs fell from my brown paper grocery bag onto the freshly shampooed living room floor. SPLAT! The sticky yokes were oozing from the carton, and all I could think was, “We really should have BUILT rather than bought!”

You might be wondering what broken eggs have to do with buying or building a home. Well, you’ll understand the connection soon, I promise.

A few months ago, my wife and I were trying to decide whether to build a home, or buy one. With the current state of the housing market — including a huge inventory of unsold spec homes — we decided to buy a home… and we’ve been regretting it ever since.  It’s not that I hate our current home — it’s a nice 2,000 square foot Craftsman home with a huge master bedroom and bath; it has everything we wanted in a home; but something just isn’t right!

It’s our own faulty, really. When our real estate agent first showed us this home, the first thing I noticed was the crazy layout. When you enter the house from the garage, you open the door and find yourself in a dark little laundry/mudroom. If you don’t trip on one of the dozen pairs of shoes laying around, you’ll probably end up stubbing your toes on the hidden stairs leading up to the living room. We have begun to affectionately refer to this room as “The Airlock” because of the way you have to open one door, close it; then open and close a second door, just to enter the home.

After making your way through the living room, scooting around the table and past the china hutch in the dining room, you find yourself in the kitchen. The kitchen is nice. It really is. The problem is that you practically have to trek across the Sierra Nevadas before you get there. Okay, so that’s an exaggeration, but it is a valid point. We told ourselves we could live with it, but I’m beginning to think we were wrong.

Our first clue was when our son lost the ice cream from his cone while trying to close the second door on the Airlock — all over the living room carpet. That sort of thing happens all the time with little boys, I told myself as I shampooed the carpet. It wasn’t until I (a grown boy) started spilling stuff that I began to lament our hasty decision. Throw in the fact that we just found out about a mold problem, and now I’m beginning to wonder if we should try to start again. This time, we’re definitely going to build!

I currently in the house design industry, and I used to work for a residential construction company, so I’m not afraid of building my own home. In fact, I really prefer being able to pick and choose the layout and features of my home. The only reason we decided to buy a home was because my wife and I were impatient. We didn’t want to wait to have it built; we wanted to be settled in for Christmas. In all actuality, we could have built a nicer home (without an Airlock) for a couple thousand dollars cheaper than what we paid for our current abode. We could have our dream home, laid out the way we want, but now we’re stuck with this moldy maze of a house. I guess we’re reaping the consequences of our impatience.

So if anyone ends up reading this post, I just want to point out how much control you have in building a home. I know there are thousands of horror stories about overshot budgets and irresponsible builders, but I can attest that if you’ll just do your homework, make it a point to get involved in the building process, and most importantly Choose the Right House Plan, you really will end up with your dream home. I’ll be sharing a few tips in the coming days and weeks that will make your build much more enjoyable, but the bottom line is this — if you want a home to adapt to your lifestyle, you’re gonna have to build.

If you want it done right, BUILD it yourself!