We cover the top moving tips and hacks you need to know if you're getting ready to move. We even cover how you can save money when renting a moving a truck, the costs involved in moving, and some hacks to make your move even easier. Watch this video ff you're getting ready to start moving to Idaho and need some moving tips.  

Pros of Buying a New Construction Home in Boise Idaho   You're looking to buying a new construction home here in the Boise and Treasure Valley area? Well, we're going to dive into the many reasons and pros of buying a new construction home here in the Boise area, and we're getting after it right now.     We're going to be covering all the many great reasons of why you might want to buy a new construction home here in the Boise and Treasure Valley area. Before you think I'm just trying to sell you on new construction home, every home and every neighborhood is has to be handpicked exactly for you and what you're looking for. And have an entire video about the cons of new construction https://youtu.be/2jKPgrjTIdg   And this is about the pros of it. If you're looking to figure out what the cons are of new construction, go ahead and click on that video and figure all that out. But we're going to be diving into the many reasons why I love new construction homes here in the Boise area and why I myself bought a new construction home.   We just covered the cons and just things you need to look out for, but let's dive into the real pros of why people buy new construction homes.   Pro #1 Scheduling of Your Move The first thing that was a big importance for me in terms of just planning to move here. I'm a big time planner. I want to know everything down to the last detail is the scheduling of your move.   Because you can purchase a home in advance before it's completed, you can actually schedule when you plan to move. I scheduled my move about 4-5 months before I moved out here. And I knew that within a short time window, that I would be able to move into my house.   There are delays that occur, especially with all the supply chain issues we've been having. But in my case, it actually was delivered on time within that window. When we first went over contract, they gave me a one month window. And then when we actually signed all the paperwork, it had shifted a week out.   I just got an Airbnb for 7 weeks. I got up here early, got to know the area and I gave myself a couple extra weeks on the back end so that I could have time to allow them to have some delays and then get myself moved in. I really liked that from a scheduling standpoint, assuming the builder is able to meet their schedule.   What they told me, which ended up being true is that once they got countertops installed, they knew exactly when they'd be able to complete the build. That was the big driving point for them because that counterpoints are a very long lead item. It can take months to get them. Once they're onsite and installed, they know that like clockwork, everything else is going to go. That's something to keep in mind is the scheduling aspect. I love that from a planning perspective.   Pro #2 Brand New Home The other thing of course is you're buying a brand new home. No one's ever lived in it. The systems are brand new, your air conditioning, your furnaces, your roof, your flooring, there's no wear and tear on it yet. It has a long life, you're not going to have a lot of unanticipated costs. You have a little maintenance because of that. And you can really budget a lot better in terms of your ongoing maintenance costs.   You can save money for when those needs do ultimately break, but you've got 10-15 years on that air conditioning and furnace, at least. Your water heater, maybe even more, 20-30 on your roof, your flooring, depending on when you want to replace it, you've got years on that.   I really love the fact that it's like a brand new car, right? I like to buy a brand new car because I know I will take care of it. I know how to maintain my car. And I want a brand new car. I know exactly, what has been involved with that vehicle. And it's kind of like that with a house you're getting the same thing. It's a brand new car, brand new house that no one's lived in, no one's messed with it.   You're going to maintain it properly. You don't know what that other person did. They probably did not maintain their air conditioner and heater properly. I really love that from getting a brand new house, low maintenance costs because of the systems that are brand new. That is a big, big reason why people like to buy a new construction home.   Pro #3 Warranty You've got your warranty that a builder is going to offer. Every builder is going to offer a different type of warranty. You got to check exactly what that is. But Hubble Homes, for instance, they're going to offer a 1 year warranty on materials and workmanship and the major systems. I wish they would offer a longer frankly, but that's what they do.   But they do offer a 6 year warranty on the structural components of the home. Your house ain't going to fall down and they're going to warranty that that's great. CBH also offers a really fantastic warranty as well, and all the builders have a warranty. You get that peace of mind that if something's going to break in the first year or maybe for several years, it's going to get fixed.   Pro #4 Modern Floor Plans Because these homes are brand new, they're also designed with modern aesthetics and layout. You've got big wide open floor plans, a lot of windows, a lot of light, the homes, aren't all chopped up. They're not dark and they're large. People want larger homes these days, let's face it. That's a really big aspects to getting these new modern homes is you have these beautiful layouts and floor plans, and they're also move in ready.   You might have bought them in advance, so it might be 4-5 months, but once it's delivered, it's move in ready or the home might be complete and you can just go buy it and move in. As soon as escrow closes. That's an awesome feature of buying these new construction homes. You don't have to wait for someone to move out and then they bang up the walls or other furniture and you got to go fix it all. And it's done. It's just moving ready.   Pro #5 Blank Slate It's a blank slate. You're getting a blank slate of a home to do with it, what you want. You got neutral colors and you can paint the walls. The bright, crazy colors you want to do if you want, if you're into that.   But you can do whatever you want with a home and you can make any changes to it as well. Of course, you got the landscaping. I talked about that, unfortunately, isn't going to done, but you do with it exactly what you want. Design your dream backyard.   Pro #6 Energy Efficient Homes And you're also getting energy efficient homes. These homes that are being built right now are super energy efficient. That's going to drive down your heating and air conditioning costs and just keep you more comfortable overall. And a lot of the homes also now are smart homes where you can control the lighting and the air conditioning, the heating remotely as well, or put them on timers. That's an awesome feature for a lot of new builds as well. Pro #7 New Communities They're just beautifully designed and laid out. And depending on what community you're going into, they're going to have modern community rooms, beautiful pools, clubhouses, tennis courts, big playgrounds, that kind of thing. That's you're paying for your HOA, but they're just modern and brand new and nicely designed. Those are features you're going to get in these brand new construction homes.   Pro #8 First Come First Serve And finally, they also are a great option if you're getting locked into bidding wars in a rapidly appreciating hot sellers market, the new construction homes are first come first serve. Oftentimes you can get in without having to get into a bidding war.   In fact, that's actually what I ended up doing it because I just didn't want to deal with it. And we just went ahead and bought one off the shelf, so to speak, and we were quite happy with it. That may not be for you and in a declining market, we're in a shifting market right now. That's not really the case right now, where as far as the bidding wars, you do have more options on the resale side. But if you are in a very hot sellers market, then no bidding wars is a great way to go with a new construction home. We'll look at a couple of things that could go either way, depending on how you look at things. Not Established Neighborhoods The trees, you're really going to notice this when you drive through a established neighborhoods that have been there for 15, 20, 40 years, you're going to have very large trees and tree lined streets. They're nice and green in the spring and summer, and then you've got the changing fall leaves in the fall.   And then of course they're dead in the winter but in the new construction communities, you're going to have a lot of very small trees that were just planted. And it's going to take awhile for those to grow up. It's going to take 10, 15, 20 years to grow into that established neighborhood.   Unfortunately, you're not going to have beautiful tree lined streets. You don't have a whole bunch of houses with little tiny trees in front of them. I guess the advantage to that is you have fewer leaves to deal with that. You don't have to sweep up as much to got to do it. You're going to have tons of leaves. You're not going to have pollen from the trees or sap dripping off the trees.   When I first moved here in the Airbnb I was in, I have this tree that I had to park under. A two trees, actually, one was loaded with sap that just constantly dripped all over my truck. And then the other side was dripping like these little, it wasn't a pine tree, but it was just drip these little balls, it's these little pine cone type things all over my truck. And then they would stick to it cause it had the sap from the other tree.   I'd drive down the freeway and these little pine veins would just sit on my truck and they wouldn't come off. They knocked off easily but I had to wash my truck every few days just cause it got so dirty from all the sap and pollen and that would just fall all over my truck.   That's kind of a bummer but you're not going to have that in new construction homes because the trees are not nearly as grown up.   The other thing that could go either way is if you're buying in a seller's market or in a shifting/ buyer's market. If you purchase in a seller's market where the market is appreciating rapidly and you lock in a price down here, but the market's appreciating and all of a sudden it's up here at a higher price by the time you purchased, you have built in equity right there, right?   If you buy it $500,000 and the market goes to $600,000, you have $100,000 of equity. It can work in reverse of course, if you purchase here and then the market goes down, now you're kind of underwater right out of the gate. And this goes back to potentially lose the earnest money deposits, liquidated damages. If you choose to pull out.   Right now when I'm writing this blog, we are certainly in a shifting market. Housing prices are dropping actually right now, I chose to buy in that market. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but here's why I decided to buy it. And then we'll get into some benefits of this too. But I looked at it as, "would I be happy" buying this house in 10 years? When I look back 10 years from now and say, I'm happy that I bought that house.   And I said, "yes", I believe in real estate as a long-term wealth building strategy. And I believe in real estate. I do believe that in 10 years I would look back. Even if my house dropped in value, I know it's going to come up and rise in value overall. And I don't plan on selling this house. I'm just going to rent it out and keep building wealth that way, buy another home and so on and so forth.   That is a great long-term wealth building strategy. I don't really care so much that it's going to go down. Of course, I'm going to hedge my bets and I negotiated a pretty sizeable price reduction and the credit as well in order to compensate for that and made me feel much more comfortable about buying in a softening market.   And that's the thing right now, builders are actually offering some price reductions, but the big thing are credits. Toll Brothers right now, they've got a promotion where they're offering interest rates at around 4% on a 30-year conventional mortgage. And you've got Hubble Homes that's offering $20,000 move-in credits on to be built homes. CBA is offering me $20,000 - $30,000 in credits as well.   They're playing ball. They understand what's going on. They want to sell these homes. They don't want to get stuck with them. There's certainly a buyer's market going on right now. I want to call it a full full blown buyer's market, but it's certainly there. You're going to be able to negotiate some good credits right out of the gate. You're not going to negotiate price reductions.   The builders do kind of set their prices and that's what it is until they drop them. That's just kind of how it works. Either they raise them and appreciate a market or they drop. They don't really negotiate. They will negotiate over credits. But a lot of times they have these kind of standard programs. They're like, "well, you can get this with this credit, do you want it or not"? That's kind of how the negotiations tend to go with the builders.   The other factor to keep in mind too, when you are buying new construction and you're buying 6 months in advance is your mortgage rate. Again, builders are offering discounts right now on that, they're offering long-term rate locks. Like I mentioned, Toll Brothers, they're offering a long-term rate lock for free.   But if they're not offering that, or if the market is a stronger market, you're going to have to pay a rate lock fee to rate lock. I was able to rate lock for 5 months at, I think it cost me like $2,500. It wasn't bad at all. And that got actually applied to the down payment as well to the closing cost. There might be some upfront costs that you might lose if you back out but you do have to factor in getting a rate locks. You'd locked in your rate so it doesn't go up over time. Let's dive into a few just kinds of the things you should be aware of when you're buying a new home as well, is the importance of getting an inspection. Some of these builders are, they might kind of discourage you from getting an inspection. In fact, if you go on like CBH's website, there's a document there that says, "Hey, before you spend $500 on an inspection and waste your money, we want to make sure we tell you all the things that we do in order to prep the home and sell it. We've pre-inspected it and here's what we'll fix. And here's what we won't fix". They're going to try to scare you off from doing it.  Hubble Homes, for instance, they don't come out and say that. But they'd say, "if you get a third-party inspection and ask for repairs, it might delay the closing date". They kind of try to throw you off like, "oh, I just want to close on time and I want to get to my home, so I'll just skip the inspection". Don't do that. It's so important to have a third-party inspector come in to look at the home. They're going to go through everything and find out if the builder actually built this home correctly. The inspectors here know how to inspect new construction homes and what to look for. For instance, on the home that I am buying, we've found some structural items. There was actually a gusset plate in the roof truss framing that was missing. And one of the framing members popped out. It's a brand new home. We also found mold in the crawl space. We found a little bit of black mold on a couple of members. And that kind of worried me. My daughter, actually we've been going through basically detoxing her a bowl because she had mold exposure in a prior home that we were in. And so we're like, oh gosh, mold, but you know, what's going on? It is very easily treatable. It was a small amount of mold. The builder came in and did remediation to get rid of it. What happened is, before they actually closed it up, obviously, some moisture got in there and this is a conditioned crawl space. There's no ventilation. And it's kind of weird how it works, but it draws air from the house and then ventilates it out, to condition the home. It's using air from the house to condition it. It helps with energy efficiency. We found mold and so they just didn't air it out properly before they completely sealed up that crawl space. And then also we found the furnace wasn't working. I mean, it's a brand new home, and the furnace wouldn't kick on. We got the AC to kick on first, but you know, the builders are good for it. And they fix it all of course, but these are things if you didn't do a home inspection, you'd be stuck with. You never know. That $500 you're saving could cost you tens of thousands of dollars down the road. As we dive into the different types of new construction homes that are available in the different communities, it's important first to keep in mind that what is shown on the MLS, meaning Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, all these portals, it actually may not actually be what is truly there. These builders like to leave homes on the market that are actually already under contract. Their lead magnets, are their ways to get consumers' information to bring them into them directly so that they can sell them a home direct. A lot of times that home is not actually available, but they often times have many more homes that actually are. They kind of pick basically model homes like "Hey, these are indicative of a bunch of different homes we have. That home might be under contract, but we've got these ones over here that are very similar and there's five of them available, which one do you want now?" That's why it's so important to work with an agent who's staying in touch with the builders regularly to get updated lists, and to find out what actually is available. You don't get your change jerked around that much. Types of Communities Tract Home Homes These are going to be kind of your more basic entry-level type homes. Those could have true starter homes. It might be 1,300-1,000 sq ft, single story, and then ranging the 2,000 sq ft, 4 bedrooms, a kind of still starter home. They're not going to have an extra living room upstairs. Still kind of on a starter home to the larger move-up homes for larger families that are in the 2,500 to 3,000 sq ft range. You're going to find all these within these tract home development. These are going to be built primarily by CBH, Hubble Homes, and Hayden homes. And CBH is by far the major builder. They've been around for about 30 years now.  And they have built many of the homes here in the Treasure Valley. Most likely when you're going into a home in this price range and the starter kind of starter home tract home price range is probably going to be a CBH home. Or if it's on the newer side, newer construction then it potentially could be Hubble or Hayden. They are more affordable homes. These homes are going to range in price anywhere from about $400,000-$600,000. Why is that? You know, one reason of course is that they're smaller lots. You're going to have nice size home, but a smaller lot. And you're going to have about 7,000-10,000 sq ft. 10,000 sq ft is not bad. You get a fair matter or even 8,000 sq ft isn't bad. You're going to have a pretty big backyard. But you're certainly not going to be into the half acre type homes. You're going to have smaller lots. The communities themselves are going to have fewer green spaces. They're going to have less amenities. They may not have a community pool. They may not have a clubhouse. They may have a smaller playground. A lot of them still have playgrounds for the kids, but you're just not going to have as many amenities as well. The other big thing too, with these homes, is frankly, they're just built more cheaply. They're going to use building materials and methods that are going to save them money, right? It's like what I talked about before those return air plenums for the air conditioning unit. They're not going to install the ductwork all the way for each return so that's cheaper, but now you've got more sound issues in your home which is a pain. These are definitely in a lot of the CBH and the Hubble homes, you're going to find that. They're also going to use as cheap as possible of building materials as well. Your carpet is going to be pretty cheap. Like the house we bought, I was really disappointed actually in the carpet selection, it was really bad at some of the cheapest carpets. My wife's father is a floor-covering contractor back in California. He was, not any longer. And so my wife has worked a lot with him installing flooring, and she was like, "this is the worst carpet I've ever seen", We've never installed something that's cheap. Like we would never put that in. That's a disappointment, it's going to wear out quickly. Also the countertops. CBH in particular, you're going to get laminate countertops everywhere in the kitchen and the bathroom. It's going to be laminate for Mica, basically everywhere. Hubble Homes, you're probably going to get solid surface, potentially granite or manufactured stone in the kitchens, but you're going to get laminate in the bathrooms as well. They're going to use cheaper materials to cut costs in order to make these homes cheaper. That's the fact they are cheaper homes and that's reflected in the purchase price. Semi-Custom Homes / Fully Custom Homes As we move into these more planned developments, that might be a single developer that then pieces it out to individual builders. They have an approved list of builders that can build in these communities. And these are going to be not tract homes. They could be a spec home or the builders like 'this is the home that I'm building. And then they kind of speculate on selling it to you, but you're going to like that.   But typically they're going to be Semi-Custom Homes or potentially Fully Custom Homes. And that's where you can get in and actually design what you really want. A semi-custom home, it might already have a set floor plan, but they're going to allow you to come in and maybe change the front elevation or change the type of finishes that you're going to launch. Like, 'Hey, I want quartz countertops all throughout the home or in the kitchen or chords. And then I want to grant the bathrooms. I want this type of flooring. I want a really nice Berber carpet'. You can have a lot more options there as well, and you can design your landscaping. Or you can get into the full-blown custom homes as well, where you're designing everything, you're designing the floor plan, and everything else. Those are going to be very intensive. You're going to have so many selections and it's going to take a while to design and ultimately build that of course, versus a semi-custom or attract home development. And you're going to be spending a lot more money for that as well because you're going to be getting into all these custom finishes. Those homes tend to be more than that $800,000-$1 million plus price range. But also what's really cool is a lot of these are going to come with those RV bays or big workshops.   I think that's a great option for a lot of people. It's a great, great product. And you're going to find those, especially in areas like Caldwell, Nampa, Middleton, and Start. A little bit in Eagle. But those are really we're going to find those for the most part. If you're building a fully custom home anywhere, of course, you can build that. Single Builder The other option too, is a single builder. A great example of this is Toll Brothers. They have a number of communities here in the Treasure Valley. This is a single builder that is the developer and the builder, and they're controlling the whole entire process start to finish with them as the builder.   These are going to be a combination of kind of tract homes and semi-custom homes. You're not going to get custom homes with them, but they do a fantastic job of delivery and a great product, but you are going to be paying a bit more. An equivalent home as a Toll Brothers home versus a CBH home, you're probably going to be spending a couple hundred thousand dollars more, but the quality is going to be a little bit better. Your finishes are going to be better. You're just getting a better product overall. And the other thing to keep in mind is that the builder is going to try to get you to work directly with them because it saves them money because they don't have to pay us to help represent you to buy that house. And the thing is, is things come up that you want someone in your corner to help navigate the process for you to handle it, contracts and negotiations, handle the appraisals, handle the inspections, handle all the emotions that come along with buying a home. Do you really want to be working directly with a seller to do that? And they're only looking out for themselves. That's what's happening here. You're not saving you money by working with a builder. They're saving the money and they're probably screwing you on the back end. You just don't know it because they're looking out for themselves.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW We cover the top 10 reasons why are people moving to Idaho. And we take a look at why are people moving to Idaho from California. You need to watch this video to find out why are poeple moving to Idaho before you make the move to Idaho.