Well, I guess the first question I would ask is: are you a builder? Have you built a house before? If the answer to both of these questions is “no,” which it probably is, then you’ve got a long, arduous, learning curve ahead of you.
Thankfully, I can provide a lot of context and even offer my personal experiences with the age-old question for many move-up buyers: do I build new or do I buy new?
As a Realtor®…
Working in the real estate industry, just about every decision that I make with respect to my own home is always going to come with occupational hazards. Case in point, when it came time to leave the condo (with one child in tow, and plans for another in a couple of years…), I had this crazy idea that instead of buying a house, my wife and I would build a house.
I mean, not by ourselves. I did win the Industrial Arts award at Bessborough School in 1994, but turning a decorative bowl on a wood lathe when I was 14-years-old doesn’t qualify me to do diddily-squat in today’s Toronto development world.
The thought process was simple: I work in real estate and I see houses every single day. I know what I like and what I don’t, so much so, in fact, that I will never be happy with somebody “else’s” home.
So it makes all the sense in the world to build a house, right?
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How It Started
In early 2017, that was our plan! We honed in on two neighbourhoods in which we wanted to plant roots and see our children grow up, and low and behold, a fantastic “building lot” came along in Chaplin Estates – one of our two favourite areas!
It was a beautiful lot. The house itself was literally walls and a roof. A 40-foot frontage on a prime street and the house had zero value so there was no “risk” of buyers who were looking to renovate actually being interested in this property.
Nope, this was just for the builders and end-users who wanted to build.
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I had interviewed several builders in the months leading up to this find and my wife and I felt very comfortable with a family friend who took us to see three of his recent projects as well as his own home.
His proposal was sound. His timeline worked. His track record and experience spoke for itself. And his payment schedule was more than reasonable. Not only that, his wife was an interior designer, and she was going to be involved with the project as well.
It was seemingly perfect!
All we needed to do was go out and buy the property.
The property was listed artificially low with the infamous “offer date” that we’ve come to know and love or loathe, but how many people could possibly be interested in this house? How many people were seriously going to spend this kind of money on a lot and then spend $400 per square foot to build?
Twenty-eight.
That’s how many.
Twenty-eight.
Because on the night of offers, there was my wife and myself with our bid and there were twenty-seven other bidders for the home!
We didn’t have a chance. We bid even more than we had ever considered bidding, but the house sold for more than that. Much more.
Don’t make the same mistakes as me. Read our blog about Offer Tips for Buyers right here.
In the end, we found out that the buyers were a couple in their late-50’s who were going to build their “dream home.” I was 36 years old at the time and although I had done very well for myself, I just wasn’t in the same league. It took a lot of humility to come to that realization.
Over the next several months, my wife and I didn’t see another builder’s lot that we liked.
Not only that, we started to talk to people who had built their own houses, and we asked them what the process was like.
What Your Friends Should Tell You
“Get ready to quit your day job,” one colleague told me. “Because your new job is managing the nonsense that comes with building a house. Oh sure, you’re not the one building it, but you’re going to take a dozen calls a day about it – for a year!”
Another friend of mine said, “There’s no more golfing on weekends, or brunching, or hitting the gym for a solid three-hour workout, stretch, and steam. Your new life is spending Saturday going to look at tile at four tile stores, then spending Sunday going to look at faucets – you know, in the faucet district?”
There’s a district for faucet stores? This seemed like a whole sub-culture that I knew nothing about.
The more we talked to people about the process of building a home, the more I realized how it would take over my life.
Speaking of friends, is it a good idea to hire your friend as a real estate agent? Read more here.
But What About the Final Results?
Don’t get me wrong; everybody who built their own home said they were happy in the end. But another person told me, “There’s a 50/50 chance that you either fire or sue your contractor.” That was backed up by another person I spoke to, but both of them said that they were elated with their homes and they would never have been able to own a home like that without having built it themselves.
So what in the world were my wife and I to do?
Well, we unofficially put the search on hold for a while. A year, in fact. There were no builder lots that we liked, and while we did see a couple of resale homes, we didn’t feel the home or the timing was right.
Fast-forward to April of 2018, which is one year after we unsuccessfully bid on a builder’s lot.
I was sitting in my office looking at a great builder’s lot located, once again, in Chaplin Estates. This was exactly what we had been waiting for.
But I was also looking at this house that had been sitting on the market for months. It was a “builder house,” located in an area that we had not considered, but they had reduced the price twice already and it looked gorgeous online.
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My wife and I went to Chaplin Estates to walk the lot of the property that represented land value, then we turned the car around and went to Bennington Heights to look at a brand-new, never-lived-in builder home that wasn’t selling.
The exercise was mind-blowing.
What we thought we wanted, we actually didn’t.
Yes, if we purchased the builder’s lot and built our own home, we would get every feature and finish in a home that we could ever want, and we might even make some money on the build (this wouldn’t happy in 2024, however, as prices to build have skyrocketed!).
But on the other hand, this house was one that we could move into in two months. Forget the twelve-or-more months to build, plus living in a rental in that time period so we could sell the condo to finance the construction. Forget living and breathing interior design for a year. Forget that phone call – the one about your Italian marble that was on a ship scheduled to dock in two weeks, but is now going to take six months. Forget about the problems, headaches, and “what could go wrong.”
In our case, at that time in our lives, working with a builder took a massive backseat to buying from a builder.
So that’s what we did.
The house wasn’t completely my style or taste if I’m being honest. I always wanted a main floor home office that’s wood-paneled; you know the one where there’s a globe that opens up and there are bottles of scotch and rock glasses inside? Yeah, I guess I thought I’d be that guy.
But instead, my main floor home office is sleek and done in a transitional style, with frosted glass French doors and modern light fixtures.
The basement rec room layout wasn’t what I had envisioned, but I made it work by simply moving some built-in speakers from one side of the room to the other, as well as the built-ins, which my wife didn’t love.
“We bought a brand-new house and you’re ripping out the walls and ceiling?”
Yes. I was doing that.
I also hired an electrician to move a light-switch twelve inches so I could get a piece of art exactly where I wanted it!
It didn’t take more than a couple of months for me to grow to love the style of this home. What I thought I wanted, I didn’t really need. The fact that I adapted to this modern/transitional style so quickly tells me that maybe I didn’t know what I wanted in the first place!
Hindsight is 20/20
Having been in the home now for six years, I wouldn’t do anything differently.
Every buyer out there is different. There are different budgets, different timelines, different goals and ambitions, and different desires for features and finishes.
There are different risk tolerances too, and there are different levels of stress and anxiety in every man and woman.
Building your own home is not for the faint of heart but it can be exceptionally rewarding.
Just try to read what I’ve shared above and put yourself and your partner in my position. What sounds like you? What doesn’t? What would you do differently? Where do you disagree with our path?
Best of luck on your journey!
And if you need help with that journey, wherever it’s taking you, or want to chat more about my own experiences and that of other clients who have found themselves in my place, feel free to connect with me at davidfleming@bosleyrealestate.com or call 416.642.2660 today!
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