Question: Also, a lot of those new homes are single brick and have low ceilings etc. > Go to a few open inspections and real estate auctions, you’ll see they are > designed to look more impressive than they are.>>
> In our househunting last year, we found this to be true. A lot of the new > “show” homes in the new neighborhood wasted a LOT of space and had little > irritations that really bothered me (stair steps so short even my size 6 shoes > hung off the edges), huge lofty foyers that looked great from the outside, > but inside were simply a waste of unusable space.
> When you started looking at the bedrooms, they were small and cramped, and > generally had closets about 2 X 2 or so. All the square footage went into > making the foyer and living room look impressive.
Answer: DH and I must have toured more than 100 houses in the course of our two recent home purchases. I got suckered into the “bigger is better” mentality when what I really wanted was the nearly unlimited storage space the large, poorly constructed 1970-vintage house had. (Five garages! Miles of under-eaves closets! Master bath with dressing room! Built-in dressers in every bedroom!)
We did not repeat the same mistake when we bought the house we’re in now. Although our 2,000 square feet probably seems large to some people it’s about half what the other house had, and only slightly more than our personal starter home where we lived for 20 years. And the storage here is ample, too.
Most of the newly constructed houses we looked at had all the types of problems you mention and more. We lucked into a 7 year old custom house which while it is no paragon of high-end construction is nevertheless solidly built and functionally and aesthetically designed. I’m firmly convinced that the shoddiness problems with new construction can be at least somewhat offset when a buyer/owner is involved in a hands-on manner in the process. That’s my best advice for people looking at buying new or newer homes.
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