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REAL ESTATE TIPS: Building a house is an adventure but may not be perfect

Over the 15 years I have been selling real estate, if I had $1 for every time someone told me that they would like to build a house and then never did, Andy and I would have enough money to spend a week in Jamaica this fall for free.

For some reason, the idea of building a home seems to be the American dream of home ownership. It’s an opportunity to build something perfect because nothing existing feels quite right.
I get it. We have talked about building over the years as well.
There is kind of an exciting element to building a home. Spending hours poring over building plans, walking through model homes that are decorated to perfection, building something that feels like “you” is quite an exciting adventure to think about.
There are some not so good realities too.

Here are some I have heard from friends and family who have built homes: not realizing how small your eat-in kitchen was going to be because the space for your table looked bigger on the drawing than it was (I would have made the same error if we built because I have to be in a physical room to really get an idea what dimension looks like); big garden tub when you thought that you were getting a big jetted tub; missing linen closet in a bathroom because the framer forgot to do it.
Not to mention delays from weather, damaged supplies that arrive on site or back ordered items, or things like paint and carpet that doesn’t look quite like it did on the sample.
This happened to us when we added on. I thought that I found the perfect carpet to go in our bedroom. On the showroom floor, the paint color and gray carpet color looked like they were a match made in heaven and I knew that this bedroom we had been waiting on for months was about to be perfection this side of heaven.
When the carpet installers came, I was on cloud 9. Then they rolled it out.
It was perfect alright – perfectly green.
I was freaking out. The carpet guys were amazing! They were so kind to me as I was about to have a nervous breakdown right in front of them.
They told me that they were going to go take a lunch break so that I could think about it. When they came back and I had obviously been crying, they told me that they wanted me to be happy so they were not going to install.
I ended up getting a completely different carpet from that same store (Stoller’s) that I absolutely love and my story has a happy ending.
But luckily it was carpet, not a space for my table that was smaller than my head was imagining those dimensions to be, or a missing linen closet that could not be added later. My carpet pick could be changed.

When building a house, sometimes a change can be made and sometimes you notice it too late.
My point is that building a house can be awesome! And given the chance and the right circumstances, I would definitely build.
But it isn’t the perfect answer to avoiding buying someone else’s existing home.

Look at building as another option, not the end all, be all. Because building is not a stress-free experience that leads to housing bliss that it can sometimes be made out to be.
I want to take the next few weeks and really dive into building a new home.
We will talk about the way to build economically and another week we will talk about knowing if building is right for you (or at least giving you some thoughts to ponder).
In the meantime, I hope that you are enjoying the fall weather. I know I am! Have a blessed week!

Esta Ryder, Broker/Owner
President’s Club
Ryder Realty, LLC
estaryder@gmail.com
330-317-6912

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