Whether you are looking for a forever home, a vacation getaway, or simply the house to live in for the next chapter of your life, you may be wondering if it’s worth building a custom home vs buying one that already exists.
It’s a good question and one that we field a lot at Corbo Group. Full disclosure — we are in the business of building custom homes here in Connecticut, but we strive to ensure our clients are making decisions that work best for their requirements, preferences, and budgets.
Read on to learn more about the process of building a custom luxury home, and get insight into whether a new build is right for you.
Is Building a Home Less Expensive than Buying?
The short answer is no. However, when you build custom, you can make your budget go a lot further toward the exact specifications you want. Unless a house exists on the market that has every feature you’ve dreamed of, you’ll either be settling or investing in renovations.
If it’s important to you that your home has unique features tailored to your lifestyle, then custom home building is the best path forward.
Buy or Build: A Comparison
Pros & Cons: Building a Custom Home
When you are ready for your next home, and leaning toward a luxury custom home, keep these factors in mind:
Pro: New builds are endlessly customizable.
When you opt for a custom home, you dictate nearly everything about your home. With the help of a partner that designs and builds, the sky is the limit! You can add a butler’s pantry, appliance garage, double ovens, and an island a mile long if entertaining is important to your family. That’s just one example of how your home can be uniquely designed to meet your needs.
Con: Those details come at a price.
Building a custom home generally starts at a higher price than buying a comparable existing home. When you add complex features, that price does increase. The mark of a good partner is how they guide your budget. If you are clear about must-haves vs nice-to-haves, the builder you choose to work with can help you ensure the result is a dream home without ballooning scope (or your budget).
Pro: Build your home exactly where you want it.
Building a custom home means you are untethered by location. If there’s a plot of land — you can build. If the homes for sale in a particular town or destination aren’t meeting your needs, you don’t need to worry. You have the freedom and flexibility to build the home you want, exactly where you want it.
Con: Finding land can be challenging.
However, the search for land can be difficult, especially in desirable areas. You may need to consider running utilities, grading slopes, or removing trees. When you work with a real estate partner to find your land, they can advise this process. We also always begin our projects with a site analysis before you purchase to ensure your land is reasonable for your project.
Pro: Quality workmanship will last a lifetime.
New builds sometimes get a reputation for being low-quality. You’ve heard the term “contractor special”. While that may apply to DIY flips or massive developments, custom home building is all about the attention to detail. When you build with us, you get a quality home built from premium materials that stand the test of time. We also provide a yearlong guarantee of our work, ensuring peace of mind that your custom home is made to the highest standard.
Con: Custom homes can take longer to build.
Quality workmanship takes time. Buying a house usually takes about 6 months to a year once you’ve started looking while building a luxury custom home usually takes between 9-12 months after breaking ground, which doesn’t include the process of searching for and buying land.
Pros & Cons: Buying A Home
On the other hand, if you are leaning towards buying, here’s what you should consider:
Pro: Faster timeline from start to finish.
Buying a house tends to take between six months to a year from search to close. While there are certainly outliers, buying a home tends to be a faster process than building a custom home from scratch,
Con: You may have to sacrifice must-haves.
Whether it’s a dream home or a vacation home, you likely have specific details in mind for your future residence. If you buy, you will need to let go of some requirements and have an open mind. If you have your heart set on a great room with a wood-burning fireplace, but you need to have 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, you might find that you have to compromise — or renovate, which adds up in terms of time and budget.
Pro: Buying can seem less expensive…
On the surface, buying a home is less expensive. And if you find exactly what you are looking for, you won’t incur too many hidden costs. Overall, buying does tend to be less expensive than a custom build.
Con: But it may cost more to renovate and maintain.
However, what you save in money upfront can come out of your pockets in other ways. You may save $150,000, only to funnel it into an addition to open up your floor plan and add that extra bedroom. Or you may discover after the first heavy rainfall that your basement floods, and you need a french drain installed as soon as possible. In addition, new homes are more energy efficient and built to current standards. Existing homes can be 50% or more expensive to heat or cool compared to their new counterparts.
Considerations for Building a Custom Home
If it’s within your budget, building a custom luxury home offers you something that buying cannot — bringing the vision in your head to life. No compromise, no sacrifice, just your dream home.
If you choose to build custom, it’s wise to work with a design-build team that handles the project from start to finish. For our clients, we begin our engagements with a site analysis, to ensure the land they want to purchase suits their needs. In some cases, clients work with our real estate partner to find the land. Next, we design the home, manage the entire permitting process, and break ground.
Our local network of relationships and deep experience in the custom homebuilding industry enable us to run projects quickly and smoothly, saving you the headache of scope creep, mismanaged deliveries, or otherwise unpleasant unexpected costs. That’s not to say we’ve never hit a roadblock, but when we do, our team knows how to keep projects moving forward.
Ready to make your dream home a reality? Get in touch with Connecticut’s premier custom home builders.
