Team me: Building a new home in a subdivision

So it looks like I will be in OKC for the foreseeable future (girlfriend still has 1.5-2 years to finish up her Bachelors). I feel pretty confident the company I work for will be growing strong well into the future. Oracle just spent $10billion to acquire us at the end of last year and have already taken over another huge chunk of the top floor of the building we are in so we can grow our staff.

For what I pay in rent for my downtown 700sq ft apartment, I could easily just buy a $160k house and have that. Keep in mind here $160k will buy you a brand new 1650sq ft home 3 bed 2 bath 2 car garage with storm shelter, appliances, nice finishes, etc. I could push my budget higher since the girlfriend will move in with me once her house outside of Tulsa sells, but I want her contribution to turn back into play money for me.

What are the downsides of new construction vs an older home that's been fully renovated? The biggest negative for me, is that new subdivisons don't have all the great old trees as 30-40-50-60 year old neighborhoods do. A huge positive for me, since I don't know crap about working on houses just cars, is that everything is new. New HVAC/Roof/Applicances/Plumbing/Electric/etc vs an old house.

An older home that's been fully renovated is still an option, but I'd have to add $50-60k to what I want to spend, or buy something that needs updating over years of living there.........and I'm not too sure I want to do that.

Hope you have better luck than my coworker. He had a home built in some cookie cutter home and it was a nightmare. $600k house but the construction was as cheap as possible.

So I guess what I'm saying is do research on your builder.

It's always interesting to hear about typical home pricing in different parts of the country...$160k doesn't sound like much these days.

I don't know about OKC but a lot of areas around the country seem to have homeowner's associations for new housing - if that's the case, it may limit what you can do with working on cars in your driveway. Also, new housing tends to have small garages these days.

There is a lot to be said for buying a new house. I did it once and it was nice that stuff just worked. Yeah, usually you get less yard and fewer trees but if you buy at the edge of the neighborhood you might have a treeline.

I found my house in the "studs and plywood" phase and was able to spec out all my own finishes and whatnot. I did have to build a fence and there are a million little details that will take up your time/money/energy that you'll have to attend to. But that's any homeownership experience.

I think so much of that depends on your personal tastes. We have built 3 new construction subdivision homes, and actually started a 4th (went through design plans, picking out features, etc...) and the builder went belly up. I have zero interest in an old house, just not me. I don't do housework and have zero interest in it.

I also loved being able to design the house to our taste. For example, in our current home, the cookie cutter floor plan has it as a 4 bed and 2.5 bath....don't know sq ft off top of my head, but it's around 3000. But we made some modifications, which are so much easier and cheaper to do when the house is being built than after. For example, the house is now 3.5 bath as we had an en suite put into my daughters bedroom. We had a linen closet put into our laundry room. We eliminated the tub in the master bath. Used half the space the tub would have taken for a closet and the other half for a mega sized master shower...it has full body heads on each side. Instead of a tub, we have a hot tub on our back patio. Our basement is a walkout with 12' ceilings. I had 6' wide double doors put in. We have all kinds of electrical upgrades...I had 4 individual circuits put in specifically for my Christmas display...and I had them run conduit under my driveway so I could feed extension cords under the driveway instead of across it. We have a tankless water heater. There's more, but that's just some of what we did. It would be a fortune to do all that to an older home. Was easy as cake to do for new construction.

I despise subdivisions and HOAs, but I love new homes.

^All those upsides, which are all huge. Minimize living space, maximize garage, put in all the energy efficiency stuff at the building stage that would cost a fortune later. Hell, you can probably customize yard in such a way that it minimizes yardwork required later (lots of ivy instead of grass, zoysia where you need grass, gravel/patio area/etc.).

To ME, HOA is a plus if you don't have city ordinances that would handle that stuff.

The only downside I can think of honestly is location. For me, I can't buy a new home where I want it (close into the city) as that space has had homes built on it long ago. That's the only downside, but its a dealbreaker in my situation.

I am curious what your rent is though. A mortgage, taxes, and insurance are only a fraction of home ownership cost. I bet your $160k home will end up costing you more than your rent.

If I were to do it, I'd make sure that they were using top quality... well, everything. Pay for it now rather than regret it later. My house was built in 1927, updated in 1970-something, again in the late 90's, and again in the early 2000's. The original 1927 stuff is still awesome. The late 90's stuff is... well, its E36 M3. The 2000's stuff was overspecced and awesome, the 1970's stuff is not bad. But the 90's modifications/reno's are causing me more work now, because they were underspecc'ed.

Additionally, spec the garage as large as you can. At LEAST 3 cars. If possible, I'd do a 1 or 2 car attached and 2-3 car detached. Basement (if you have them) should be full, 8 foot ceilings (if possible), and have room for a workbench. I don't care about finishing the basement, and am unhappy that mine is partially finished. It would be a lot better and flow much easier if it didn't have the walls up.

Master bedroom and bath downstairs. Or at least a guest room that if something happens can fit a king bed in.

Elfa in all the closets. Big closets. BIG.

Design the kitchen right. I've been in 4 places now that they berkeleyed that up (well, mine shouldn't qualify as that since its from 1927, but...)

Lastly, the dining room is often a pointless feature. If you include one, make sure it can serve double duty as something else (bedroom, den, office, whatever).

ProDarwin wrote: ^All those upsides, which are all huge. Minimize living space, maximize garage, put in all the energy efficiency stuff at the building stage that would cost a fortune later. Hell, you can probably customize yard in such a way that it minimizes yardwork required later (lots of ivy instead of grass, zoysia where you need grass, gravel/patio area/etc.). To ME, HOA is a plus if you don't have city ordinances that would handle that stuff. The only downside I can think of honestly is location. For me, I can't buy a new home where I want it (close into the city) as that space has had homes built on it long ago. That's the only downside, but its a dealbreaker in my situation. I am curious what your rent is though. A mortgage, taxes, and insurance are only a fraction of home ownership cost. I bet your $160k home will end up costing you more than your rent.

I pay just over $1k/month for my downtown apt that is in the middle of everything. Even with no downpayment and insurance/PMI/taxes that puts me around $150k for a home.

Enyar, yes, one of my worries. But this particular in my part of the country has a pretty good reputation for building affordable, quality homes that aren't $400k and up. $400k and up buys an unbelievable amount of house in this part of the country since we have so much space. OKC is in the top 5-10 most spread out cities in the country.

I can spend what I mentioned for a new house, that it's in a good school district (for OK) that's still only about 6 miles from where I work.

Also, I don't know if any of you are weather nerds (OK/KS) folk tend to be, a storm shelter is basically a necessity in this part of the country. Especially now that I'm in OKC vs Tulsa. The vast majority of big storms you here about in OK hit around the OKC area and west vs the NE corner where Tulsa is.

z31maniac wrote: I pay just over $1k/month for my downtown apt that is in the middle of everything.

Ok, that sound accurate. My house probably costs me about that much/month when you factor in "house E36 M3" and its roughly the same size/price you are looking at. Mortgage, taxes, insurance are only about 70% of the total cost.

New homes come with HOA. Your are pretty much not allowed to change your mind, let alone your engine in such a hood.

I like houses from the 60s. Seems like it was a peak period for construction in that we had not yet run out of trees to make decent wood and skilled trades were plentiful and affordable.

then we went into the 70s with aluminum wire and particle board and it all went for a E36 M3.

Whatever house you buy is going to constantly need work; its what they do. Buy as small a house as you can stand to live in and you will spend less time and money on the stupid thing.

Overrated overpriced wood boxes...sums up houses and coffins.

NOHOME, not all new houses come with HOAs and not all HOAs are all encompassing. Most just control the landscaping of the entranceway. If you are outside a city limits you need a reasonable set of HOA rules to replace all those little rules the city gives you.

z31maniac, As one builder I work with says "In a new home you don't have someone else's toe nail clippings in the carpet."

I've owned a mortgage company for well over 30 years and I have been an appraiser plus I was a Realtor for 10 years prior to that so I've gotten to see most situations that arise. You always buy a house with the thought that one day I'm going to have to sell it. This means not buying something that appeals only to you and not buying corner lots, near schools, businesses, high tension power lines, apartments or shopping centers. Those end up being predominantly rent homes because people don't want to buy/live there.

In general if you are new to an area & going to be moving again in the next 3 years or less you should buy new. Especially if you can buy in a neighborhood where they are still building and might still be building when it's time for you to leave. The Builder will draw buyers to your neighborhood when it's time for you to sell.

The bad about a new neighborhood is that you don't know who is going to live there and how they will keep up the properties, the good is that more people want newer than older so you have a bigger buyer pool.

Also newer homes are much more energy efficient. My last house was built in the 80's and my utility bills were $700-900 a month. My new house is twice that size and my utility bills are usually in the $100 range. You can do a lot with that amount of free cash each month!

Yeah, big trees are nice, but they can be a lot of work & worry, especially when it's tornado and thunderstorm season in OK (I'm in North Texas).

Also older homes require more tinkering. Tinkering can be fun if you get to pick when & where, but the pits when you've got to do it instead of doing something you want.

There is no wrong answer in the old vs. new question, only an answer that might be more right than another.

The market is liking Trump which simply means prices are rising rapidly and so are rates. Strangeness in other parts of the world such as what is going on in England right now could slow things down, but only for a short while. This also means if the market quits liking Trump things will slow down.

This is a statement of fact, not meant to be a political view. It's like saying the corn is growing because we've had a lot of rain. The way politics go has a direct cause and effect on markets & prices.

This means buy as much as you can now while you can buy it at lower prices and lower rates. This allows you to live in it longer and take advantage of what you will soon be reminiscing about as the "good old days".

carguy123 wrote: You always buy a house with the thought that one day I'm going to have to sell it. This means not buying something that appeals only to you and not buying... near schools... Those end up being predominantly rent homes because people don't want to buy/live there.

What? We bought our house specifically because it was near a specific elementary school and middle school. Our friends, one neighborhood over, bought their house specifically because it was near a specific (different) elementary school and the high school. And the houses that we tried to buy (got beat by contractors) went so fast because they were near the schools.

Did you mean college/university?

carguy123 wrote: Also newer homes are much more energy efficient. My last house was built in the 80's and my utility bills were $700-900 a month. My new house is twice that size and my utility bills are usually in the $100 range. You can do a lot with that amount of free cash each month!

$700 a month??? My house, in Chicagoland (cold in winter) was built in 1927. Even including cable/internet, the highest I paid in utilities was $300 a month. My old house (rented it) was built in 1919; the highest I ever had for that one was $375 (smaller, but original insulation and windows). How was it $700 a month????

No, I meant right by the school. Being in a certain school district or being able to got to a certain school is a plus, or negative. But being right near the school where you have all the noise, traffic and kids heading home from school turns most people off. Also the petty crime rate is higher.

And I've seen utility bills as high as $1,200 for one of my old neighbors. That's just what it costs to cool a house with 30-40 100 degree days.

Heating is usually cheaper than cooling.

carguy123 wrote: If you are outside a city limits you need a reasonable set of HOA rules to replace all those little rules the city gives you.

1000 times this.

Unless you are so far out/have so much space that neighbors aren't an issue. But given the term 'subdivision', yes. You want one.

I bought a 1950 house that was built great but other houses in the area were not the same build. I bought a 2000 house that was also solid.

My thought is to look at a hundred houses and know how houses are made. Visit all kinds of builders to see their work.

Or move to my hometown and buy a Sears home. They were the best.

Sears Catalog

Wow, I live in Austin, TX area and my house is a cheaply built spec home from the 80's and I only pay at worse $200 a month in utilities. $700 in utilities is crazy.

carguy123 wrote: No, I meant right by the school. Being in a certain school district or being able to got to a certain school is a plus, or negative. But being right near the school where you have all the noise, traffic and kids heading home from school turns most people off. Also the petty crime rate is higher. And I've seen utility bills as high as $1,200 for one of my old neighbors. That's just what it costs to cool a house with 30-40 100 degree days. Heating is usually cheaper than cooling.

Then they had a 10,000 sq ft house with no insulation. Even in my 1600sq ft 1918 house in OK the highest electricity bill was around $250 in August.

mtn wrote:

carguy123 wrote: You always buy a house with the thought that one day I'm going to have to sell it. This means not buying something that appeals only to you and not buying... near schools... Those end up being predominantly rent homes because people don't want to buy/live there.

What? We bought our house specifically because it was near a specific elementary school and middle school. Our friends, one neighborhood over, bought their house specifically because it was near a specific (different) elementary school and the high school. And the houses that we tried to buy (got beat by contractors) went so fast because they were near the schools. Did you mean college/university?

carguy123 wrote: Also newer homes are much more energy efficient. My last house was built in the 80's and my utility bills were $700-900 a month. My new house is twice that size and my utility bills are usually in the $100 range. You can do a lot with that amount of free cash each month!

$700 a month??? My house, in Chicagoland (cold in winter) was built in 1927. Even including cable/internet, the highest I paid in utilities was $300 a month. My old house (rented it) was built in 1919; the highest I ever had for that one was $375 (smaller, but original insulation and windows). How was it $700 a month????

I am going to have to agree with carguy123 here. Living next to a school is a headache. Lot's of traffic and noise.

Also, in the hottest months (2nd half of July, August and September) I pay upwards of $400 just in electricity ... that's with a 19 seer AC. Not that any of this applies to Z31maniac as its dependant on location.

I would buy a new house for $160k in a heartbeat. What size lot do you get for that money in OKC??

bmw88rider wrote: Wow, I live in Austin, TX area and my house is a cheaply built spec home from the 80's and I only pay at worse $200 a month in utilities. $700 in utilities is crazy.

Nope, ours was 2500 sq feet and the neighbors was just over 2600.

Now with over 5000 sq feet and an office at the house so that we are there 100% of the time plus running a hose in ponds pretty much 24/7/300 days a year we've only hit $200 one time (over 20 people at our house for 3 weeks) and it's usually $100ish and maybe 2-3 months a year it's $70-90.

There are huge differences in construction requirements since 2000.

Re: living next to a school.

The big complaint this week on our community hoa facebook page was the contractors decision to clean the school parking lots around midnight on a friday. Would suck to live next to that! Haha

NOHOME wrote: New homes come with HOA. Your are pretty much not allowed to change your mind, let alone your engine in such a hood. I like houses from the 60s. Seems like it was a peak period for construction in that we had not yet run out of trees to make decent wood and skilled trades were plentiful and affordable. then we went into the 70s with aluminum wire and particle board and it all went for a E36 M3. Whatever house you buy is going to constantly need work; its what they do. Buy as small a house as you can stand to live in and you will spend less time and money on the stupid thing. Overrated overpriced wood boxes...sums up houses and coffins.

So much of housing depends on what you want. I'm not saying NOHOME is wrong, but my feelings are pretty much polar opposite. I hate houses from the 60s. My wife watches a lot of HGTV, I always hate houses built from post WWII through the 70s. I also wouldn't suggest buying the smallest house you can stand to live in, unless that's what you want. Not saying I'm some elitist snob, but I like my space. I've got 3 kids...yes, yes, I know there are people who had a family of 8 that grew up in a one room house that they built with their bare hands. Cool. It's just not for me. We like to have our space. I like the house I'm in now, 3000sq ft on .8 acres, built in 2015, but I honestly miss my last house terribly. It was a McMansion on 3.5 acres built in 2008.

On a different topic, I don't think HOAs are a good thing, at all. We have one because I don't have a choice. We're in a subdivision for the sake of our kids. I have to get approval to paint my house the color I want? And be sure it's not the same color as my loser neighbors? Ugh...you've got to be kidding me? You want to send me a nasty gram every time my lawn isn't cut to the perfect specs you want? berkeley you and come cut it yourself then. Thankfully, they're permissive enough to let me do my Christmas display. Plus we live on a tiny off shoot of a cul de sac and my house backs up to the woods, so I'm not surrounded by neighbors everywhere. The ones across the street from us are total shiny happy people, but whatever. Once the kids are grown, we're out of here.

Slippery wrote:

mtn wrote:

carguy123 wrote: You always buy a house with the thought that one day I'm going to have to sell it. This means not buying something that appeals only to you and not buying... near schools... Those end up being predominantly rent homes because people don't want to buy/live there.

What? We bought our house specifically because it was near a specific elementary school and middle school. Our friends, one neighborhood over, bought their house specifically because it was near a specific (different) elementary school and the high school. And the houses that we tried to buy (got beat by contractors) went so fast because they were near the schools. Did you mean college/university?

carguy123 wrote: Also newer homes are much more energy efficient. My last house was built in the 80's and my utility bills were $700-900 a month. My new house is twice that size and my utility bills are usually in the $100 range. You can do a lot with that amount of free cash each month!

$700 a month??? My house, in Chicagoland (cold in winter) was built in 1927. Even including cable/internet, the highest I paid in utilities was $300 a month. My old house (rented it) was built in 1919; the highest I ever had for that one was $375 (smaller, but original insulation and windows). How was it $700 a month????

I am going to have to agree with carguy123 here. Living next to a school is a headache. Lot's of traffic and noise. Also, in the hottest months (2nd half of July, August and September) I pay upwards of $400 just in electricity ... that's with a 19 seer AC. Not that any of this applies to Z31maniac as its dependant on location. I would buy a new house for $160k in a heartbeat. What size lot do you get for that money in OKC??

It all depends, at that money in a new subdivision, it's not a big lot by any means. But say go up to $250k?

Then you have a 4 bed 2.5 bath 3 car garage on an acre maybe 30 minutes from downtown. That's what I would prefer and I could afford it, but I don't want that much tied up in my mortgage. I have other stuff I want to spend money on.

Whether it's a track car, or me and the girlfriend taking constant camping/road trips.

If you can get past the politics of this state, and have a well paying job......it's a fantastic place to live. Lots of open space, surprising amount of things to do, one of the best amateur road courses in the country, the people here are exceedingly polite and helpful.

That's why now that I have a great job with a great company, I'll likely stay here for the cost of living and outdoor lakes/parks/etc.

OK is literally a place where people have no qualms about getting out and helping push your car to the closest parking lot and asking if you need a meal or some other help.

So I take the good with the bad and want to stay to try to help turn it around vs leaving.