I have had several phone calls recently where the client has said to me “oh I am just trying to work out whether to build a new home or buy established.” To me it’s a no brainer, build new, yes, I am the builder and of course I am going to say that. But I have brought established homes and I have built my own home. I will tell you my personal feelings on each scenario, I will let you decide whether I am justified sprouting the virtues of building new.
Every time I brought an established home, before we fully moved in, we felt the need to make it our own, we just wanted to feel like we invested a bit of ourselves in the home, even though we did these things and we were satisfied with the end result, it was never truly enough, I remember pulling up tiles in the toilet and the overwhelming stench of built up urine accidents over the years making me gag, we would repaint the walls or change the carpets again the smells were unbearable from all the accidents that had soaked into the carpets and penetrated the floor boards even though they had been professionally cleaned, there was always the ghost of someone else’s home not ours, maybe benches in the kitchen were too low for me and would give me a back ache robbing me of my enjoyment of cooking, or they should have put the window here so I can keep an eye on the children playing in the back yard, in the end it was just not right and not long after I would be dreaming up my own ideal home, how it should be, I would spend hours drawing up plans changing it and changing it until the point I couldn’t change it any more and then I knew it was perfect, I played out every scenario for every room until I knew it was just right, how would the furniture fit? how would we get enough light in this space? how would the room evolve over the years?
