Nine Reasons You May Wish to Buy Rather Than Build

Building a house isn’t for the faint of heart. In fact, I’ve determined that it falls squarely into the grouping of things we are told we should never see in the making – sausage and legislation. As the old saw suggests the process isn’t a pretty one. As a result of our experience I’ve developed nine reasons why for many people buying an existing house might be a more survivable ordeal than building.

1. Timelines are Mirages
If you are a Swiss train engineer or like to work with military precision, then homebuilding definitely isn’t for you. I don’t know how many people told me to expect a year-long project. But no, I really believed we could achieve success in the promised six months. If I had any doubts about horror stories shared by others, our second day into the project (See “Good Friday Surprise”) should have dissuaded me. We broke ground on March 27, 2005. As I write this on May 16th, the exterior painting is finally progressing fairly well and we’re down to a punch list of perhaps two-dozen items to be addressed. We’re now approaching 14 months instead of the planned six.

2. Budgets are Wishful Thinking
During the planning process we inched our “acceptable” budget up by $30,000. So, assuming that we were fairly comfortable with building a house that exceeded our budget from the start, then perhaps an additional $30,000 on top of that shouldn’t be too big of an issue – at least for folks with money. (Oh, I almost forgot, we don’t have money!!). I must say that with the exception of the “Good Friday Surprise” our builder did work extra hard to keep to our cost estimates wherever possible. Yet, our project commenced in one of the greatest run-ups in commodity prices – thus lumber, steel, concrete and just about everything else saw rapid price increases.

3. An Army of One
A former U.S. Army ad campaign spoke of “the Army of One.” We’ll while you might work with a single point of contact – your builder – the dozens of people who have a finger in your project (and a hand in your pocket) … and leave dirt on your floors … is staggering. I have no doubt that a good logistical mind could wring 75% of the time and significant cost out of construction with a well-executed plan.

4. If You Miss One Domino
When dealing with a mostly linear process where one thing must be done before another can begin, having one domino out of place causes the entire chain to come to a screeching halt. In a booming building economy like that in the Upstate of South Carolina, each crew has multiple options for work. Each, therefore, tends to make several more commitments than can realistically be met. Thus, the promised work that was to begin on Monday rarely is started before Friday (woops, I forgot few crews work Fridays) or perhaps the next Monday. That week’s time loss throws the entire “food chain” of promises into disarray and the schedule goes out the window.

5. It’s Tough Enough is you Speak the Same Language
In the U.S. we tend to think in accents. She speaks with a Northern accent or he has a distinctly Southern drawl. In the building trade the primary language isn’t English of any accent – it’s Spanish. Here the list of examples could grow quite long, but I’ll share just one. When my builder told the exterior painters, to “just paint this section of the house,” he meant that they could avoid painting the pre-painted lap siding. Fortunately, they did avoid painting the lap siding, but they also “avoided” doing anything else like using primer or caulking the major cracks between joints. One more call back and another delay.

6. Switches Everywhere Except Where You Need Them
If you buy an existing house, you take it as is. If the wall switch to the bathroom is inside the shower, you either move it or live with it. You’d think that one planning and building their own house would be able to clearly anticipate the placement of every feature in a way that best fits their use patterns. We’ll, perhaps that is mostly so at the planning stage, but then come the adjustments on the fly. On the plans we had a refrigerator in one corner, against a wall. Our kitchen planner rightly noted that the unit needed to be ”flipped” to the other end of the kitchen and moved at least a foot away from the wall. We liked that. However, we didn’t go back and change all of the wall switches accordingly. Thus, the natural “path” we had planned for the mid-night raids on the fridge, now must detour if you wish to have any light other than the bulb inside the box as the light switch remained on the wall nearest the original planned site.

7. Wallboard and Paint Cover a Multitude of Sins
When one walks into a newly finished home and sees the smoothly treated wallboard and the fresh colors it is truly seeing “only skin deep.” When you are engaged in the process literally from the ground up, you see every miss-cut board, each incorrectly driven nail and imperfections of every kind. Fortunately, most of these are just that – minor imperfections. But, some of the goings-on behind that beautiful top coat of paint do matter. For us one of the more noticeable was the fact that the water spigot outside our garage yielded not the expected cold water, rather scalding hot. This doesn’t do too much for landscape plants. When we looked into the issue, the plumber had pulled the source from the line exiting the solar panel – not the one entering it. Thus, we now have two large gaping holes in the garage ceiling.

8. From House to House to Homelessness
We thought we had a great plan when we opted to sell our house and move into an apartment as part of our building plan. The sale actually happened quicker than we planned, but we were able to find an apartment within two blocks of our building site and with a wonderful landlord who wouldn’t make us sign a long-term lease. Going from a 3600 square foot home to a one-bedroom apartment wasn’t too stressful for the first few months – especially the summer months when we could “expand our territory” by eating outside. However, as the plan stretched from six to ten, things began to get a bit cramped. Then when we gave our landlord two month’s notice of plans to vacate with full assurances of house completion, you might understand our concerns when we learned that the house would not be ready still. Homelessness was avoided by the generosity of friends who shared their home with us for two nights and an understanding building inspector who granted a temporary occupancy permit for a much unfinished house.

9. Living in Dust Isn’t Icing on the Cake
With few options and almost exactly twelve months since groundbreaking, we violated the cardinal rule of construction, and moved in with our temporary occupancy permit. If living with a construction project daily isn’t chaotic enough being in the midst of it 24-hours a day is true overload. The painters didn’t finish their touch-up for several weeks. Thus, we couldn’t move our furniture into place. In most rooms things were stacked in the middle. Top that with the fact that almost daily we’d have workers coming and going through the house like a bus terminal – and with just about as much concern about how they left it – and our marriage of 34 years and our patience were sorely tested.

All-in-all our experience has been a tough ride. I know that time heals most wounds and dulls most bad memories … I’m just wondering how much time. I’ve answered friends who would ask about progress with a quick, “a hundred years from now it won’t matter.” I really don’t think it will take quite that long.