Once Upon a Time… Buying New Homes???

I had no knowledge about much of anything and then I decided to invest in life and kick mans made up god to the curb… What comes next is 40 years of flipping houses and working a government job and getting married a couple times…

So what did I learn???

I learned that if you want to sue a builder, because you bought a brand new home and expected everything to be 100% correct, only to find out… Your builder wasn’t as good as they said…

We have bought 3 brand new builds in the last 20 years… 1 in Las Cruces by Desert View and I took that builder on with a lawyer at first then I went after them on my own using what agencies that were out there, like CID Construction Industry Division…

You get CID involved it doesn’t cost you, you use a lawyer against a builder, I will tell you, no one will work for you unless you got $50K sitting and waiting for litigation… I beat Desert View and they had to do the repairs correctly… It was in the truss’s…

When you take on a builder, you can’t go after them for cosmetic… You can go after them for mechanical, electrical and plumbing… Structural should never be a issue, but I knew enough about Truss’s to know what Desert View wanted to do was scab, and that wasn’t happening on my investment…

The next new build was on the big island and we couldn’t fix one issue and it costs us a little at selling, but we corrected things again, the builder did cheapley and sold that house for 100K more than we paid for it…

Then we get to Mississippi and I find a house I fall in love with, not because of the house, but it’s location and I knew about the issues with the new build and knew, we would address them over time and that didn’t work out, instead, when Homer got a settlement last year, we jumped on those fix’s that we couldn’t have the builder do, it is expensive taking on a builder… and he’s our neighbor…

Buying a brand new home is never straight forward and if you chose to buy a new build, ask these questions and I’ll explain why…

Construction??? 2X6 with plywood cladding or walling or styrafoam??? (several companies use a styrafoam product instead of plywood for sheeting, not great in tornadoes or hurricanes and we are seeing a company build that way here, Desert View in Las Cruces built there’s this way)!!!

Check your electrical panels and make sure they are large enough to handle today’s electrical loads or you’ll be adding breakers and that’s gonna cost you…

HVAC, be sure you check the unit that was installed and the layout of the vents… You would be surprised how many contractors do DIY instead of professional and split units are cheaper in the long run, not duct work….

Never buy a home where you actually drive down into your driveway from the road… Flooding… Always buy your house and garage above road grade and you’ll be glad you did…

Also, just because you are not in a flood plain area, check for creeks and 100 year floods and look at today’s climate…

Thanks to republican’s you are more vulnerable to flood than you likely realize…

I have creeks near me, but nothing has flooded this far from them and we got 30 inches during Arthur’s storm this year… It was not fun and our neighbor sits lower than us, she was scared and rightly so…

Buying a new home should be the best experience you ever have and I can promise you, you will find out things after you move in that will piss you off…

This last purchase of ours, has some of the worse finish work I have ever seen and it will cost me upwards of $40,000 to fix, when I put the house up for sale in 10 or 15 years…

That isn’t counting replacing the front and back doors we already did or the extra recessed lighting or fans in the rooms that should have a outside vent like laundry…

Check things that can cause mold growth or stagnation because of lack of ventilation and check every switch in the house you are buying and if you hear a crackle sound when you flip that switch, you have a issue you will want to address and I have 3 of those now and I hope Homer can change them out or I have to do it…

Trying to get this Word Press site to work right is a struggle this morning… I have seen issues with it and other applications over the last few weeks, so who ever is dicking with the internet… They are trying to infiltrate… So I can’t preview as I work on this… So I am done until things smooth out and I am not fighting the internet…

Have a great day, make a list of everything you can think of even if you think it’s dumb… It’s your home, your sanctuary and you want it to be just right for you and your family…

If it hadn’t been for Homer’s settlement last year, I would be literally back to our early days of payday to payday living and thanks to the truck we are there again… but…

My investment is whole… If I have to put it up for sale tomorrow, I will make a small profit and keep my credit good…

With Homer’s dementia progressing, having loose ends right now for me, just isn’t a option and now that I have my birth family out of my life for good, which why couldn’t that been decades ago??? I can focus on this household…

It can be scary living on a fixed income, propaganda to the hilt and a spouse with dementia… with everything I said…

I know I got this… and that’s all that matters… I may not have a wealth of money, but my investment is solid and secure and that was my goal all along… Protect what we worked decades for…

Security…

Have a wonderful day… Nothing going on but heat and little pop up storms…

I remember…

ps: Open an close every window and door… If they don’t operate easily or properly, make builder fix….