House planning :To build a house or buy one?
As you make plans to own a house, there are two options. You can either build a house from scratch or buy an already constructed one. But before you decide on either, carefully weigh the pros and cons. ILLUSTRATION BY JULIUS ERYENYU JOJO
What you need to know:
As you start planning to own a home, you may be wondering whether it is cheaper to build or buy a house? We explain the options.
if you build your home
Building your own home instead of buying will come with the following benefits, which highlights the cons of buying a house:
Designing the home
When you build your own house, you’ll enter it and have everything the way you wanted it to be from the start, and you don’t have to spend additional funds remodelling the house, as you would if you bought it.
Discount factor
When a house is up for sale, normally the seller is interested in a buyer with the highest offer, whereas when you are building your house you always want to hire a builder with a reasonably lower bid.
New community
When building your new home there is always a possibility that your neighbourhood is also relatively new in the area, which creates a new community, and for this reason, strong relationships can be built over years.
Material quality
When building your new home, you have the freedom to choose the quality of materials to be used on your house, unlike entering a new house where you get everything already built and fixed which makes it difficult to notice the quality of materials.
Supervision
The owner of the house has the liberty to check the quality of work during construction and if the builder shows compromises on quality, he can be advised to do things the right way.
if you buy your home
Buying a house will come with the following benefits, which illustrate the cons of constructing a house:
Time factor
The buyer is able to move to his newly purchased house as soon as the deal is closed, unlike having to wait for months while building a new home.
Save money on rent
Since you are able to move in within a short time after buying your house, it will help you save the money on rent. This is because when you decide to build a house, it normally takes a period of at least four months or more to complete, which means, you will continue paying rent until your new home is ready.
Changes
If your budget can allow, you can decide to make changes (modify, upgrade, etc) on the home as you live there.
Neighbourhood
When you buy a new house, you are joining an already established neighbourhood and you do not have to worry about what type of house your immediate neighbour might build.
Easy to understand the plan
Studying the plan of an already built house while walking through it makes it easy for the buyer to understand it easily, while for many people it is rather difficult to visualise their house from the architectural layouts (plans).
