Many prospective homeowners have a dilemma of whether they should build or buy a house. There is no straight answer to this question. It depends with your circumstances, tastes, preferences and budget.
Buying a pre-existing house ensures that you eliminate rentals earlier and use the income for other purposes and investments. A pre-existing house reduces the risk of money being eroded in value as it will already be offset by an asset.
However, buying a pre-existing house may not allow you to choose the plan as the house has already been designed by someone else. The rooms may be smaller or bigger than your expectations.
Building from scratch allows you to influence the design of the house and ensures that you decide your house plan. The modern day era has new and novel housing plans, hence building makes sense for you to design a classic home.
On the other hand, it is not easy to build as you have to run around to search for building materials, cover labour costs, inspection fees and have to bear the risk of price increases. For a house that is already built, there is no risk of rising prices of raw materials on the short or long term due to the fact that the price is what it is going for as specified by the seller.
Buying a house can result in incurring high maintenance costs if the house has defects such as cracks, licking roofs and other legacy problems. Building a new house ensures that you are starting afresh with a house that does not have legacy problems.
Buying a house means that you need upfront capital in order to complete the purchase or at least if it is a mortgage, a source of regular income is necessary. Building allows you to raise funds as the project commences and you can do the project stage by stage. Whether you build or decide to buy, consider convenience, customisation, cost, capacity to supervise and choice of materials. Both ends, there are pros and cons – in the end what is key is to own a home regardless of the route taken.
