Standing Out in Ohio Podcast
Brought to you from Ohio based home inspection company of Habitation Investigation. Information helpful to agents and buyers. Conversations with professionals and entrepreneurs regarding their stories and what makes their companies and themselves stand out and gain competitive advantages. Listen to stories from Ohio real estate agents and related businesses to help you know how to improve and who to consider using for yourself or friends. Created by the owners of a highly rated home inspection company in Ohio and the Winners of Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest https://homeinspectionsinohio.com/
Standing Out in Ohio Podcast
Build or Buy?
Ever wonder if building your dream home from scratch is worth the hassle, or if finding that perfect existing property makes more sense? We tackle this crucial homebuying crossroads with hard-earned wisdom and practical insights.
The housing market in Ohio mirrors challenges seen nationwide – inventory shortages, construction delays, and shifting buyer-seller dynamics create a complex landscape for decision-makers. We explore how timeline considerations often become the deciding factor: can you wait 6-12 months for a custom build, or do you need to move within 60-90 days? The immediacy of an existing home provides convenience but sacrifices customization options that only new construction can offer.
Surprising revelations about modern appliance lifespans (a mere 8-9 years compared to decades for older models) highlight the maintenance realities all homeowners face regardless of choice. Energy efficiency differences between older homes with minimal insulation versus custom builds with six-inch R-19 walls demonstrate long-term cost implications beyond the initial purchase price. We share our personal experience working with a small builder who focused exclusively on our project, contrasting this with cautionary tales about large developers who might literally sell your nearly-complete home to a higher bidder just before closing.
Whether weighing cost per square foot, quality control, or the ability to shape every aspect of your living space, understanding the true advantages and limitations of each path empowers you to make the right choice for your situation. What matters most is aligning your decision with your priorities – speed, customization, energy efficiency, or quality control – while protecting yourself with thorough contract reviews and never waiving inspection rights. Ready to make your most informed housing decision? Listen now and gain the perspective you need before taking your next step toward homeownership.
To learn more about Habitation Investigation, the Three-time Winner of the Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest Plus the Winner of Consumer Choice Award for Columbus Ohio visit Home Inspection Columbus Ohio - Habitation Investigation (homeinspectionsinohio.com)
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How to save money by winterizing your home | NBC4 WCMH-TV
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All right, laura, jim, today adventure in home buying yes, the decision to buy a house that's existing, or to build one.
Speaker 2:To build or not to build? That is the question.
Speaker 1:Yes, so here in Ohio for the last couple of years there's been a shortage of houses. There's nothing made on the market and there really should be a lot more available.
Speaker 2:There's been a building crisis because they've not been building like they needed to either, to even just keep up with demand not, you know, including the new companies and people that are coming in yeah, so a lot more people coming into ohio.
Speaker 1:It's probably good, depending where you live in the country, but more people coming in, fewer construction, uh workers available, so less work is being done. And just you had a whole covet thing which kind of people couldn't buy and also you could buy and everybody was swamped and that drained the supply, it seemed, and now it's slowly going back up, but buyers are not caving in to seller's demands like they did years ago, which is a good thing. You want a balanced system. You don't want to be really ahead of it.
Speaker 1:An advantage over another group A dramatic advantage over other people. So build or buy an existing home. So I had a comparison up here that I'm going to be looking over. So I guess the big advantage that I can see immediately for buying an existing home so I had comparison up here that I'll be looking over. So I guess the big advantage I can see immediately for buying an existing home is it's more immediate.
Speaker 1:It's there, it's built, it's done, you just move in you, yes, yes, so you could be just a few, you know. Start your search not 60, 90 days in you're moving into. Now you've got to deal with your current living situation.
Speaker 2:Right, but you would with anything.
Speaker 1:Correct Whether you're building or buying. So yeah, are you. Did you have a lease? Did you need to get out of that, or do you have to completely sell your house, which is another issue? But you can do things pretty simultaneously is what you could do, so the timeline is faster for buying an existing home. Yes, much faster you can't really customize an existing home no, it's already there.
Speaker 2:I mean, there are a couple of things that you could potentially do, like if the wall isn't um load-bearing, you can maybe take out some walls or put some things in and kind of tweak some things that way, but that's pretty much as far as you're going.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, Building a house. Yeah, you can structure it however you want. For the most part.
Speaker 1:Of course you have to have the builder or engineer have to look at it and go yeah we can't really do that, or we could, but it's going to cost you an extra $10,000 to do that wall that way, but definitely more customizable. And way, but definitely more customizable. If you're not going crazy on the house you're designing, yeah, you can do. A lot is exactly what you want now if you're buying an existing home habitation investigation is the way to go for a home inspection in ohio.
Speaker 3:trusted, licensed home inspectors for your needs. From radon to mold to warranties For a great home inspection, you really can't go wrong. Visit homeinspectionsinohiocom.
Speaker 1:The appliances, the HVAC system, the roof. Some of those may be a little old or getting there. Hopefully they replaced them or kept up on those things, but those may be an issue that you need to deal with.
Speaker 2:So you may need to save money back because if they're getting older, those may need replaced. And we have recently learned from talking to a tech that was doing work on our washing machine that they are saying that washing machines and appliances, dishwashers, things like that only good for eight to nine years. That's it, that's how they're building them now.
Speaker 1:Which sucks, because I've done inspections on houses that were built in the 50s. They still have the original appliances in there because they were built last.
Speaker 2:Well, those weren't planned. Obsolescence back at that time either.
Speaker 1:Correct. Wow, yeah, didn't use as many electronics that go bad. They used many plastic parts, everything was definitely more rigid. Yeah, made well, so that is going to have, unless you're buying a house from the 50s that still has original appliances.
Speaker 2:You're probably going to need new appliances.
Speaker 1:You're going to need new appliances eventually. So kind of even out, because you're going to buy new appliances anyway, and if you buy a brand new house? You need 10, 15 years down the road, it's going to be time for some new appliances. So that's every house. But if you're for, if it's your first purchase or right up front, you're not going to have any too many issues. The first 10. First year ease, the first year maybe up to the first 10 years unless it's a new house all in a GE all-in-one.
Speaker 2:Don't buy those.
Speaker 1:You have to look at reviews.
Speaker 2:You have to look at reviews. I forget things about them, but who knows, we've been having problems with ours.
Speaker 1:So energy efficiency your older house probably not built up to modern standards for energy efficiency. The insulation is going to be not that thick. In the attic the walls may be a little bit narrower because our house, we build it six inch walls and that's all insulation. So we got r of like 19 in our walls. Most builds I'm seeing now they are two, but four framed walls. So your r factor is 11.
Speaker 2:So not that much insulation compared to what you can do if you customize it right, I was going to say but because we customized and we had a custom builder, we could make those changes.
Speaker 1:And actually he said that was how he builds anyway he was gonna do it that, yes yeah, so you custom builders are really good but older, not going to be as efficient typically Right.
Speaker 2:Now that having been said also, though, because the way the laws changed for energy efficiency, like in the 70s and 80s, you almost want an older house like that, so that you've got the airflow and it gives you recycled air, so it's not as contaminated by, like VOCs or mold or things like that. It gets that airflow, which will be another podcast.
Speaker 1:Yes, that could be a podcast Like what would a homeless, if a homeless vector, were to design a house for himself, what would he do? And we know exactly what we did. So that's that's how that was going to go. It's just how we did things and the timing and how just how we did things. Some of the what just how we did things and the timing and how just how we did things. Some of the what I'm doing for this outdoor sauna also is help helpful air quality. So another thing we.
Speaker 2:so we bought land. It was something we'd always wanted to do. We actually were on a waiting list with our builder for a year and a half, like we had asked around and everybody to a man gave the same name for the builder. So we were on his waiting list for a year and a half. So if this is something that you think you may want to do, you should start looking for land and be able to know where you want to build and have all of that stuff set up, because then you can slowly go through the process. So, for example, in Vinton County the only permits that were required were for septic and well drilling.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, we can get into that.
Speaker 2:Definitely. So that goes into the timeline over here. That can go into another timeline down the road here.
Speaker 1:On this thing here. The speed of it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:This is saying like six to 12 months for construction permits, and all that Depending upon how your land is. You may have to figure out how you're going to get water on there. Electricity Is there a driveway, Do you?
Speaker 1:have to create that, yes, so we're a community. That's what I've been taking care of, right, so you have a whole lot more things you're planning to do if you're building your own place. So yeah, definitely things you need to figure in Location. If you're building a place that's in a established community or is gonna be established, you got your neighborhoods, you got your amenities probably a grocery store not that far away, gas station, coffee shop.
Speaker 2:Could have an HOA, depending on where you're at and what community it is.
Speaker 1:Could have a caring association yes, they could have an HOA, depending on where you're at and what community it is. Could have a Karen association yes, they could have. That risks you. The thing I'm looking at says there could be possible delays. There can be delays on anything, really, but if you're building a house with a large builder in a community, you have a lot less control over the quality of the build.
Speaker 2:And we mean a lot less control.
Speaker 1:You also have less leverage because if you decide or threaten to go, I'm going to buy this house because you guys aren't taking care of this. Less control. You also have less leverage because if you decide or threaten to go ahead, I'm gonna buy this kind of buy this house because you guys aren't taking care of this. They may go, I I don't care we'll sell it to somebody else. You buy this house or we'll sell to somebody else.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter to us we actually know a client this has been a couple years that were building a new house and it was with a larger builder and maybe within a week of closing the house got sold out from underneath them to somebody who came up and said, hey, I want that house, here's x number of dollars, and it was more than what they were buying for and the builder just said, okay, fine, and they were out of the house yeah, that builder had a clause in agreement they could sell to somebody else who offered more so be careful.
Speaker 2:What you're're signing is the long and the short of that. Don't sign away inspections. You definitely do not want to do that, especially with a larger builder. Do not sign away the fact that they can get a higher price for that. Make sure that clause isn't in there and just read over it. You need to read this contract. Maybe have an attorney look it over for you and and explain some of those that they don't, you know, make sense to you. You need to make sure you understand that contract and that you're not signing away right yeah, don't be pressured to sign an agreement and if you're being pressured, walk, walk walk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good deal today it'll be a good deal tomorrow if it's like legit. So yeah, look at the total cost for everything. The cost per square foot is cheaper to buy an existing older home.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that makes sense, because it's already done.
Speaker 1:But if you have your own land, you get to control the build, the style. You can definitely follow up on every single weekend yourself if you want, we did. You have a lot more control, you're probably likely a better quality build in the end. Yes, because you can keep an eye on them what they're doing. But I would use a small builder, one that's not going to like the builder we use. He would only do one house at a time.
Speaker 2:Yep, he and his son work together and they just pulled in people as they needed, so like to put the trusses up for the roof, or there was something else that they called in people to help them with.
Speaker 1:Well, they subcontracted out a HVAC company.
Speaker 2:HVAC, that was it.
Speaker 1:Which there was no markup for that.
Speaker 2:There wasn't.
Speaker 1:No price markup.
Speaker 2:We just got directly the bill from the HVAC company and we paid that In fact, most of our bills came either directly from the supplier or from the company that provided whatever service or appliance or whatever, and we just paid them directly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is how our builder did it.
Speaker 2:We paid him for the labor Set fee every month.
Speaker 1:And we just took care of the expenses that he had.
Speaker 2:And ours was just four months, wasn't it or?
Speaker 1:five. No, it was wow. We can talk about timeline later on, but they started working it in the wintertime so we had freezing temperature with delayed pouring concrete. So we had those issues. Like I said you can have delays. No matter where you're building at, you can have delays. Now new build often will come around with warranties for their new build.
Speaker 3:If somebody did a good job. You really don't think ours had one specifically. If somebody did a good job, you really don't need to worry about that.
Speaker 1:You do not. Plus, you can always buy a home warranty if you want, but you should be all right with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think if we were to call our builder and go hey, we've got a question about this, he'd just pop in because he has.
Speaker 1:So the big decision if you're going to buy an existing home versus a new build is really timeline, right, do you have? The time to go to that county where you're going to build in and find out what you need, get the permits, find the builder to do it get on that list.
Speaker 1:Yes, get on the well yeah list or, either way, they have a list of who they're going to take care of next. Do you have the timeline for that? I'm glad we built our own house. I am too. I like that because our location is a huge factor there, but it's the speed of it. Do you have the time to wait for somebody to build the house and deal with all that stuff? We did. You have the time to wait for somebody to build the house and you have the infrastructure and deal with all that stuff and we did.
Speaker 2:We knew we had owned our land for a couple of years, decided we're tired of leaving, we just want to stay here, and so that's when we started looking around into stuff and it took us time. We slowly did stuff. We had people come out and do things and then when our builder came out and started, we were already good to go, like we were up and running because we'd gotten everything cleared away beforehand.
Speaker 1:Yep. So I think that's about it for this one. Decision to buy an existing or have one built kind of depends on your timeline that you really need to follow. You have definitely more control if you're building line that you really need to follow.
Speaker 2:You have devon war control if you're building less likelihood of issues like some of the other new builds we've seen, where there's a lot of mold so we're gonna stay, stay tuned. We've got some other reasons that will break down more for you and a few other ones.
Speaker 3:Thank you everybody. Bye guys.
