So you're looking at buying a new construction home here in the Boise Treasure Valley area. We're going to be covering everything you need to know about the cons of buying new construction home before you buy one so you can make the best decision for yourself. We're getting after that right now. We are going to be going over exactly what you need to know before you buy that home for some of the things that you're not going to get with that home and that you might get caught  unawares and surprised by before you actually buy that home. Everyone thinks of Boise when they move in here. Well, frankly, a lot of people don't actually move to the city of Boise itself. Boise is the capital, the largest city here in Idaho. But a lot of people, especially when they're looking at new builds, are actually moving to the suburbs of Boise. These are all individual cities surrounding Boise, such as Eagle, Star, Middleton, Caldwell, Nampa, Meridian, and Kuna. Those are the big areas that people are moving to. And that's where most of the new construction actually is, especially in, little bit in Eagle, but Star, Middleton, Nampa Caldwell and Kuna. Those are blowing up with new construction. Meridians kind of built out, but you can still get it. And I'm talking brand new construction where you're buying from the builder. There's a lot of homes you can get that are for resale that are only a couple of years old because people have to move and relocate for various reasons. You can still find fairly new construction that isn't exactly brand new, new built off the builder. And there's actually some benefits to going after that versus doing new construction. We're going to dive into all those things right now. Cons of Why People Buy New Construction Homes Con #1 Landscaping and Fencing The first one up is, when you're buying new construction, just from right from a builder, they may or may not include landscaping and fencing in the contract. Oftentimes they are going to provide landscaping out front. They want the community to look beautiful. They want it to be consistent with the whole neighborhood. That's why they have the HOA. But they may not do landscaping in the back. Most likely they won't, unless you're getting a fully customized home or the builder allows you to do some upgrades along the way, such as landscaping. If they don't provide fencing, the HOA is certainly going to require it. That's going to be an extra cost that you're going to have to come up with. And sometimes the lower end builders won't provide that out of the gate, pun intended, but sometimes they will. Make sure you're looking out if they got fencing included, do they have any landscaping? Most likely the backyard will not be landscaped. It will just be a scraped dirt lot in the back. Con #2 Hard Soil The soil here is very hard because these homes are getting built in farmland. What they've done is they're going to scrape that good top soil off, cause they need to get down to good soil so they can build a good foundation for the homes, your house doesn't settle. But unfortunately that strips all the nutrients out, all the bugs, all the good probiotics and bacteria that's in the soil and it's just rock hard. What happens is if you go and try to plant grass, right on top of that, it's going to die. You're going to have all these brown spots. It's going to be splotchy and your grass is just going to die. Unfortunately you have to typically over excavate your soil and then bring in new soil on top for a top soil so that your plants and grass can actually latch on and have the nutrients they need to grow and thrive and survive and have a beautiful backyard. That's an added expense just between landscaping, depending on what you want to do, and then having to excavate and add in your top soil. And because it's so hard, you also are going to have the tendency for water to kind of run off your property. Maybe if it's not sloped properly, which it should be away from your home, it can go into your home, into the crawl space. You've got to make sure that it's sloped away properly when you're doing your in-home inspection, but because you can have all this running water on top of your landscaping, it can then have a tendency to pool. That's the other thing you got to look out for. And most likely either the builder have them do it, or you got to do it, after the fact, is install a French drain. A French drain is essentially a hole that's drilled or dug down through that hard top layer into the sand layer beneath that. And then that's filled up with coarse gravel, like three quarter inch aggregate, and then a little area drain on top. And that allows the water to hit that drain, filter down through the gravel and then hit the sand layer and escape from your property. That's how you have to handle the hard top soil on these new builds. Those are all things that you just may not be aware of when you're buying a new build. You're looking at these model homes and they're all perfectly landscaped and beautiful. And then you actually have to come out of pocket for all this stuff. And this stuff you just may not have been aware of it. The other thing too is some of these builds, especially again, in the more tracked home type builds, they're just going to drop in a little 10x10 concrete patio for you, you have a little 10x10 pad when you walk out your patio, that's it. That's all you got and you get your dirt lot. I don't know about you, but I like to have much more concrete. When you're entertaining hen you want to have a nice concrete surface for people to walk around on, put your chairs, your fire pit, all that kind of stuff. I got a solo stove I like to put outside. I just like to have it on a nice concrete surface. That's usually an added expense too. If you want to add a lot of concrete, that's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how much concrete you want to actually pull it in. That's kind of a little bit of a bummer that you got to look out for when buying a new construction. Con #3 Water And before we leave the exterior completely, let's talk about water. Real quick, you're going to have an HOA and a new construction, and you want to try to find out if that new build or the HOA includes water in your HOA fees. It's not going to include your interior water, your faucets, your drinking water, and showers, but oftentimes it can include exterior water for landscaping cause they want you to keep your exterior beautiful. You want to try to make sure that you've got that included, but they don't. That's a big con cause it can get expensive. You can certainly spend hundreds of dollars a month keeping everything watered. But because they want the front landscape, sometimes, even if they don't include complete exterior water, they will include front water. I have water that's on a meter for the HOA just for the front, not for the back. A trick that I've heard some people do is buy a long hose, like 150 foot hose tap into the water in the front. They got faucet, you got spigots out there and run that to the back. Boom. Now you've got your backyard watering covered by the HOA. Con #4 Appliances Let's head inside a little bit and take a look at a few things that you may not be aware of that are not going to be included. That's typically going to be your appliances. You'll have a range of course, but you won't have a refrigerator and you won't have a washer and dryer. Those are added expenses if you don't already have them that you're going to have to pick up. That's not necessarily terrible. It gives you an opportunity to buy a brand new one and everything's nice and brand new that you get to select exactly what you want, but you know, a lot of resale homes, oftentimes that's included. It's just another extra expense that you may not have been looking for. Con #5 Blinds The other thing interior wise is blinds. You're going to have no interior blinds, typically. Now again, on these custom homes, you can probably, you can add that in, but your typical tract homes, spec homes, even semi-custom homes, you're typically going to have to buy your own blinds. You get to select what you want, but be prepared to shell out $1,500-$5,000 depending on the level of blind quality that you're looking for. Con #6 Vents Another kind of odd thing that I've noticed in a lot of lower end builders versus the custom homes is they have these vents that are installed in between the hallway and the bedroom. What that is, it's above the doorway. And what it is, it's actually a return air vent for the air conditioning heating system. Instead of installing a return air vent in every single room, it's basically like a lazy man's way or a cheap way of installing a return air system. Heating and air conditioning needs supply air, and it needs return air in order to function properly. What you often see as a return air in the main living areas and the master bedroom, but you won't see it in the other bedrooms and laundry room. You'll have this hole with the vent that's just a pass through. And what it is, is that's allowing the system to balance and they don't have to install duct work specifically for each room with a return air. It's a much cheaper way, but obviously now you've got this kind of unsightly event, but more importantly, it allows sound much more sound to pass through the walls. If you're like me and I've got kids and they got to take naps and you just have a lot more sound that's traveling through the house. And if you go ahead and block them up, it messes up the balance of the system and you're going to have inconsistent heating and cooling. Room might be colder or hotter than the rest of the home, depending on the time of year and how that system is functioning. Overall, what you're going to find too in these homes is that, especially if you're buying from a home builder like CBH, Hubble Home or Hayden Homes, you're really not going to have a whole lot of opportunities to upgrade the home. You might, especially if the home has not been built yet, it's a future build home or a to be built home. Or as they call it a pre-sold home, meaning they haven't built it yet. They call it a pre-sold home. You can have more opportunities to upgrade your home. Selecting countertops, selecting carpets and flooring, that kind of thing, maybe doing your landscaping, but generally speaking, you're not going to have a lot of upgrade options. You're kind of stuck with what they're going to give you, and that can be okay, but you can't upgrade it. If they do allow you to upgrade, it gets really costly. A friend of mine, he just bought a Hubble home. His first one was a spec house, no upgrades a lot at all. His second one was a pre-sold home. He kept his first one, he's renting it out. He loves the Hubble homes and he did a lot of upgrades, but that caused a lot more expense and a lot more delays in order to get all those upgrades done. And what you're going to get in a lot of these homes is pretty basic as far as the type of building materials. And I'm going to dive into that a little bit more when I get into the CBH and Humble Homes so we can dive in a little bit more about that because people want to know why are those so cheap? And we're going to cover exactly why that is. Con #7 Off Gassing Homes The last thing to keep in mind, it's not really a con per se. It's just something you need to be aware of is that these homes, because they're brand new, they do off gas, especially inside. They've been closed up and they've got materials in there, like the carpet, paint, the LVP flooring, any sort of glues that might be in the Formica countertops or the carpets, those are going to off gas. And those are the VOCs that are escaping, is normal, but the house might smell plus it just exposing yourself to more chemicals. Because this home has been closed up for a while, what you want to do is open the house up, open all the windows, put some fans in there and air it out for a day or two. You can even run some diffusers like eucalyptus and lemon, that's going to help to absorb that and dissipate that. Just keep that in mind that these homes do off gas, that's normal and just open it up and you'll be good. Con #8 Contracts These last couple of cons are more about the contract and they are about the actual home. The first thing you need to know is that most likely if the home does not appraise at the purchase price, then the way that these contracts are typically written are that you have to come out of pocket for the difference. You're not using the standard Idaho real estate offer contract or using the builders contract. We can negotiate that stuff up front and try to clarify it. But sometimes that can happen. Right now, where the way the market is with balancing out, but it's really not an issue, but that can have. That was kind of more of an issue before when the market was rapidly appreciating. You just got to be aware of that. That potentially you could be on the hook for the difference in the appraised value and the purchase price. But right now the bouncing market is not such a big deal, but you need to watch out for that. The other thing too is it's difficult to pull out of these contracts so they will require an earnest money deposit. That's like an initial deposit to secure the home. And oftentimes it can actually not be a whole lot of money. Like when I bought my home from Hubble, it was only $2,000. However, if you want to pull out what they get you for is liquidated damages. Liquidated damages has nothing to do with water or water damage. It is as the contract term, that's called liquidated damages that is basically saying for you harming the other party by pulling out, you're required to pay them damages, a fee,1 in order to pull out on top of your earnest money deposit. You're going to lose your earnest money deposit, most likely because these homes, these contracts are written in such a way you don't have financing contingency. With the changing market, this could change as well, but this is how it's been for a while here in Idaho. And you're going to lose your earnest money deposit, which could be a few thousand dollars. And then they're going to hit you with for liquidated damages. And that could vary. But for instance, the Hubble contract is written with a $5,000 liquidated damages. You might be in for $2,000-$5,000 earnest money deposit, and then get hit with liquidate damages on top of that at $5,000, if you decide to pull out for whatever reason, cause you couldn't get your loan and you did an appraise and you don't want to pay the difference. Or you decided you don't want that home anymore and you want to go buy another home. They can come after you for that. It does go to arbitration. It's a whole process and thing, but potentially you could lose $7,000-$10,000 because of the way that these contracts are written. 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, if 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 any 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. That's the thing. We work with people all the time that are relocating to the Treasure Valley and we absolutely love it. And we need to talk to you so that we can figure out what your lifestyle is. Where do you want to live? Do you want to live out in the country, out in Middleton or in Star or do you want to live in right next to the Greenbelt in Eagle so you can get easy access to the river or maybe in Meridian, same thing, easy access to the river, more central and more built out. Or you're looking for that slower pace of life in the country and say Nampa, and you're okay with driving a little bit further and just depending on what you're looking for. Curtis Chism, Realtor208-510-0427 | Mobileboise@chismteam.com Chism Team | NRDS# SP56593brokered by eXp Realty

You're thinking of moving into the Treasure Valley in the Boise Idaho area, and you're looking at buying a new construction home. And you want to know all the pros and cons of buying new construction. This blog and video is for you. We're getting after it right now. We're going to be covering all the pros and cons of buying new construction so you can make the best decision for you. Whether you want to buy a new construction here in Boise Idaho, or maybe buy a resale home that someone has already lived in and is selling on the market. New Construction Boise - Pros and Cons Con #1 No Backyard Landscaping, Hard Soil, and Fencing The first thing that you have to keep in mind when you're buying new construction homes is that most likely landscaping is not going to be included. The front yard probably will be included. However, the backyard is definitely not going to be included unless you're buying a fully custom home or maybe a semi-custom home. But if you're buying a home from one of the big builders like CBH,Hubble Homes, or Hayden Homes, then most likely, exterior landscaping in the backyard will not be included. And you're going to have to spend a lot of money to landscape that backyard. And unfortunately what happens here is that because the soil is so hard because they've scraped that top soil off from a farmland they're building on right now, it's rock hard. When you plant grass, plants, or fruit trees, the soil is so hard that the grass doesn't take to the soil and it dies. You have to over-excavate that, and that's a lot of expense. And then put new top soil down before you plant your grass - so keep that in mind. And also because it's so hard, you can have standing water, because the water is not filtering through into the soil. You will need to install a French drain, which is basically a big hole with a lot of gravel in it that goes down into the sand layer about 10-15 feet down. The water trickles through that and it filters out and gets off your property. Those are a couple of things to keep in mind, that you won’t have backyard landscaping and you've got a really hard soil that you've got to deal with before you start landscaping your yard. The other thing too, is that there may or may not be fencing and the HOAs are going to require fencing in these communities as well. A lot of them do have them, but some of them don't, and that can be an extra expense that you weren't planning on when you're buying a new construction home. Con #2 Low Quality Building Materials The next thing up is that in some of these homes, you're going to have lower quality building materials than you might have in a resell home or in another higher end community as well. That's how some of these builders keep costs down. Of course, is they are choosing cheaper construction materials and methods. For example, in CBH Homes, you're going to have laminate countertops in the kitchens and in the bathrooms. Unless you're buying an upgrade, which is hard to get a lot of the builders, these track home builders, they're not going to give you upgrades. That's another kind of con is that you're not getting a lot of upgrade options. And if you do, it's expensive and it delays things. It's pretty much, 'this is what you see, what you get'. You're getting laminate countertops everywhere. In a Hubble Home, you might get an actual granite countertop in the kitchen or a manufactured stone slab, but then you're going to get laminate elsewhere. You're also going to get cheaper flooring materials. The home I bought the carpet was terrible and it  was very disappointing. My wife, her father was a floor covering contractor in California and she helped them install tons and tons of Florida and over the years. She was super disappointed. And of course it's just not very comfortable and it wears out fast. That's the way to keep costs down though is using cheaper building materials. Con #3 Cheaper Construction Methods For instance, in a lot of these homes, you're going to find these vents that are installed above the doors of the bedrooms and what that is, is a pass through air flows for the return air of the air conditioning and heating system. And the way it works is that air conditioning heating needs a supply air, and it has a return air for the air to balance and escape and balance the temperature. What they do is instead of installing a single duct for the return air in each of the rooms, they put return airs in the living rooms and maybe the master bedroom, but then they don't install them in each bedroom. And then the air just kind of passes through above those doors when the doors shut to balance everything out. The con of that is, of course, you've got a lot of extra sound that's going to transfer between the rooms. If you've got babies or kids that are trying to sleep or take naps, you got more sound you've got to deal with. If you try to block them up then to deal with the sound, then you have unbalanced air flow and your rooms are going to get hotter or colder, depending on the situation. That's kind of a bummer, but that's something to keep in mind with new construction as far as cons. Con #4 Patio The other thing too, going back to the exterior is you are going to have pretty much a very small patio that they're going to install probably like a 10x10 patio. Maybe a 10x20, if we're lucky, I don't know about you, but I like to have much more concrete in my backyard. I like it nice and clean. You're going to get this little dinky 10x10 foot slab. And that's what you get. Then you got to go pour more concrete, which is expensive, or you do grass in your entire backyard, which you see a lot of here in the Treasure Valley. Con #5 Lack of Appliances Another con is you're really not going to have all the appliances installed. You're going to have a range, but you're likely not going to have a refrigerator. You're not going to have a washer/dryer. Those are just added expenses that you have to deal with when you're buying a house. Also, you're not going to have blinds on the windows. You got to go out and spend money on blinds. There can be thousands of dollars upfront in appliances, blinds and the landscaping, and maybe concrete work, depending on how much you want to do. But obviously you have to have appliances and you need to have blinds too? Those are some hidden expenses that you may not have been expecting when buying new construction home. Con #6 Contracts The other thing to you going back to, or going to contracts is that it's hard to get out of the contracts. They're going to have an earnest money deposit, that's typically non-refundable. Usually they're fairly low, a few thousand dollars, but if you back out, oftentimes, then they'll come after you for liquidated damages. And that's going to be an extra fee on top. Liquidated damages has nothing to do with water. It's just a contract term that basically says, "Hey, you harmed me by pulling out of the contract so you owe me money to help me recover my losses". That could be another $5,000 depending on what's written in the contract. If you back out for whatever reason, you may end up losing $7,000-$10,000. And also appraisals, if the appraised price of the home comes in below the purchase price, the way these contracts are written is that you're going to be on the hook for that difference in the cost. That's something that needs to be addressed and negotiated upfront. The other thing too is that these builders are tend to going to try to dissuade you from gaining an inspection, but it's super important to get an inspection. You can go on one of the big builders website, CBH, and it just says right there, it doesn't say don't get inspection, but it says, 'Hey, before you waste your money and spend $500 on night inspection, let me tell you exactly what we do to prepare the home as a pre-inspection'. They're trying to encourage you or make you feel like good about that they're doing their job, but they're saying, 'Hey, these are all things we do as a pre-inspection to make sure the house is delivered in a high quality manner. But here's the things that we'll cover. And here's what we won't cover in an inspection'. Those are things you've got to kind of fight it out with the builder sometimes, but definitely get an inspection. When we inspected our new construction home, we found a missing gusset plate on the trusses in the roof. And so an actual framing member was already popping out. Brand new home and we found this in an inspection. We found some mold in the crawl space that had to be addressed. And we found out the furnace didn't work either. They had to come in and get all that fixed. They're good for it, of course, but you might save $500 and then find out that you should have spent the $500 and got all that stuff fixed. Pro #1 Brand New Homes The number one thing is these are brand new homes that no one has lived in. All the systems are brand new. You have a lot of life and longevity left on these systems, like your AC, your furnace, your flooring, your roof, you've got gears left. No one has not maintained it, right? That's I look at it as like buying a new car. I like to buy a new car. I like to know that I've maintained it properly. I want to know that no one else abused it and didn't maintain it properly. I kind of look at buying a house the same way. It's nice to buy that no one's lived in, no one's abused it. It's a clean start and you can maintain it properly. I really like it from that standpoint. And there's lower maintenance costs of course as well, because things aren't breaking because they're all brand new. Of course, it's good to save money to replace those things when they do break down the road. But up upfront, you're going to have very, very low maintenance costs. Even though you're going to have some higher costs doing landscaping and blinds and appliances. Pro #2 Modern Floor Plans The other thing too is you are getting very modern floor plans as well so you're getting nice light, bright homes that are tend to be on the larger side. They're not all chopped up with walls and weird places that make it feel small and constricted. I really liked the modern floor plans you're going to find in these homes. Pro #3 Energy Efficient Homes You're also getting very energy efficient homes. These homes are being built with modern standards that are very energy efficient, that are going to reduce your heating and cooling bills. And a lot of these homes are going to be smart homes as well. You can control your lighting and your heating and air conditioning remotely as well, which is a cool feature. And what's really cool is you are getting a warranty with the home. Each builder is going to be different depending on what they're offering. But for instance, Hubble Homes offers a one-year warranty for materials and workmanship of 1 year on all the major systems and a six-year warranty on the structural components of the home. I wish it was a little bit longer overall, but it's pretty darn good. And I know people that love having the warranty just as a peace of mind, when buying a new construction home. Pro #4 Blank Slate You're also getting a blank slate. This goes back to having a nice modern home. You're going to have blank slate, a nice neutral colors, and you can customize it exactly how you want when you move in. Also these new communities, they're going to tend to have really nice new amenities like clubhouses and pools, and big open spaces. These are modern homes, modern communities with all the latest and greatest features. This is something that could go either way, depending on how you look at it. But I like having an established neighborhood where you have established trees that are nice and growing up, but those really only exist unless if the neighborhood is about 15 years old, that's when they get to be a decent size. And then you have the nice tree lined streets with the green trees and in the spring and summer, and then the fall colors in the fall. But if you're in a new construction home, you're going to have these smaller trees that are small. And they're going to take a long time to get there. They're going to take 15 years to get there. The benefit though, of course, is that you're not going to have as many leaves to deal with, there's no pollen to deal with. You're not going to have much sap, some of the trees drips up. When I first moved here into an Airbnb when I was waiting for my home to be completed, I had to park under these 2 trees and 1 had dripped sap all over it, over my truck. And then the other 1 dropped, these little like kind of pine cone type things all over it. And I'd have to wash my truck every couple of days to deal with the sap and the pollen that was coming from these trees. It was terrible. That's something that go either way, depending on how you look at it. And the other thing too, which is again, can kind of go either way, is just when you're looking at homes on the MLS, like when you're looking at Zillow or Redfin, that kind of thing, what's available, what they're showing online, probably isn't actually what's available.  They like to use homes as kind of lead magnets to drive people in, to get them to talk to the builder. And then, 'oh, actually that home was not available, but we've got these other couple of homes that are similar, that are available'. So you might be all excited about one home and then find out that, 'oh, we don't have that, but we've got this one and it doesn't have that third car garage, it only has two', that kind of thing. It can be a little misleading. That's why it's important to work for someone like us, where we'd stay in touch with the builders regularly to find out what they actually have, get the actual list so that we can get them to you and say, 'Hey, this is what's actually out there right now'. Those are the pros and cons of buying new construction here in the Boise and Treasure Valley area. Curtis Chism, Realtor208-510-0427 | Mobileboise@chismteam.com Chism Team | NRDS# SP56593brokered by eXp Realty

Are you in the market for a new home? If so, have you considered buying a new construction home? If not, you should! There are a number of benefits to buying a new construction home, including the fact that you can typically customize it to your specific needs and preferences. Plus, new homes are often built with the latest and greatest features and amenities. Keep reading to learn more about what you need to know before buying a new construction home in Idaho. 1. When you're looking at new construction homes, it's important to remember that you're usually buying from a builder or developer, not an individual homeowner. This means that there may be some additional fees involved, such as HOA dues, utility hook-ups, and other costs. Be sure to ask about all of these potential costs upfront so there are no surprises later on. 2. It's also important to understand the warranty coverage on a new construction home. Most builders offer a one-year warranty, but some offer longer warranties of up to 10 years. Make sure you understand what is and is not covered under the warranty, and get everything in writing before you sign anything. 3. Be sure to have a realistic idea of what you can afford. New construction homes can be very expensive, so it's important to have a budget in mind before you start shopping. Don't forget to factor in the cost of property taxes, insurance, and other potential costs like HOA dues or utility hook-ups. With a little bit of planning, you should be able to find a new construction home that fits both your needs and your budget! 4. There are a few additional things to look out for when buying a new construction home, though. For example, many new homes come without window coverings, landscaping or even appliances. So if those are things that are important to you, make sure to ask about them before you sign any contracts. Additionally, new construction homes may not have all the same amenities that older homes do. If you're looking for a certain feature in a home, like a pool or a large yard, make sure to ask about it before you buy! 5. New construction homes can be a great option for those looking for a brand-new home that comes with everything included. Just remember to ask about potential additional costs, get everything in writing and be realistic about what you can afford. With a little bit of planning, you should be able to find the perfect new construction home for your needs! 6. Another thing to keep in mind is that the prices of new construction homes can vary dramatically from one subdivision to the next. So do your research and make sure you're getting a good deal. Additionally, be sure to ask about any HOA dues or other potential costs that may be associated with the home. 7. And finally, always consult with a real estate agent before buying any property. They can help you navigate through all the paperwork and give you expert advice on whether or not a new construction home is the right fit for you.  If you're in the market for a new construction home, Idaho is a great place to be. With plenty of beautiful landscapes and friendly people, it's no wonder that more and more people are moving here every day. Our website has all the information you need to get started on your search for the perfect new home. We have listings for both existing homes and brand-new construction, so take a look today! Curtis Chism, Realtor208-510-0427 | Mobileboise@chismteam.com Chism Team | NRDS# SP56593brokered by eXp Realty