NatalieC

If you have enough money to buy drapes in the first six months after occupation, the contractors have not done their jobs.

that made me lol.

heading to bed, more great info, shared all of it with brian

i decided to print it out and im gonna be copying and pasting it into lists to print , especially all of the questions posed. i had thought of a lot of stuff but somethings in there never crossed my mind whatsoever!

ill get back to the thread asap tomorrow

so glad some of you have the Realtor end, others buyers, others builders, its exactly the type of feed back im looking for!

thanks for all the great replies

i read the first 3, im heading out now to figure out what we will do with our lease that is up in a month with the landlord, and will come back and read all the long ones..

just to clarify, we arent intending to build from scratch or deviate the actual model( since yes that drags it out alot and a few of the builders we have spoken to refuse to deviate from the actual structure of the model. we are just thinking of the"upgrade" options the house can have. most of them are structural or decorative, not many have function. ill have to go look at the list i have available to list a few examples.

like i said ill be back soon to read all the great info more clearly.

the one we are most interested in is a 3 bd +loft (instead of 4th bed) , 3 car, finished basement home.

the model the have as a 4 bd + loft had larger bed rooms but much smaller living areas, and the basement was divided too much for our liking. i WILL admit, it is a much more young child friendly home( which we have none of but do intend to have) brian has no real desires with the home other than is having a finished basement. a room int he basement with no or very few windows (he intends to black it out and make an AV room) and that it have a 3 car garage.

the larger home didnt have his "dream" av room as a possibility, so it crossed off that one. we have been told 6 months to build, which im thinking is more 9months to a year.

any how thats just a few more bits of info

Try to find a good contractor that does custom homes. Check references!

Thanks

Yey all, long time since ive been here but ive been a long time browser since my 2 year AOS was granted, an still speak to some vjers via email and messengers.

i was updating my time lines and figured id post a question.

we have been toying with the idea of buying a home, a new one. or building to suit.

we looked at many builders available to us and found one we actually were impressed with. i had asked for help in other forums and done lots of research for our area on line and got mixed emotions on them ( the builders ) . some loved them some hated them etc, thats not really what im wondering about.

im wondering how many of you have recently bought a new home or built, and im asking any wisdom youd like to throw along to us.

i have a nice list of "to dos" like getting a good inspector, making sure to ask the right questions, realtor vs. no realtor etc but im just asking for any wise words from your experiences you may have.

this would be mine and brian's first home and we actually intended to live in it for a good 30 years

we are sort of skipping the typical "starter" home and jumping right into our permanent one. we are both tired of moving ( i moved 4 times in 3 months when still in toronto then the move to the states, and then the move a year later to our current apartment: nuts to this! ) and we would like our big jump from apartment to home to be pretty much permanent (of course work may change that /promotions or job changes)

ideally this would be our home through having kids and getting older

the one we are looking at getting (or building) is just great, a lot of house for the money it costs. we found one model we really loved but it was a bit too far away, so we looked at different subdivisions and found many willing to build the model we are fond of elsewhere.

so again any words of wisdom things you wish you considered, about buying a home, how you went about it, designing it (mostly things you hate or the bad side to certain features like plant shelves aka dust shelves... ), about the closing, ANYTHING you think will help, im willing to come and take into consideration and jot down.

so thanks for any response thrown out. ill appreciate all of them!