Build or Buy?

Weigh up the pros and cons between buying an existing dwelling or building a brand new home.

Building a brand new home

• Have everything the way you want it, there’s no need to inherit anyone’s renovation or decorating disasters.
• Choose a home design that perfectly matches your tastes and lifestyle.
• Select everything from the colour of the walls and tiles, to the bathroom fittings and kitchen appliances.
• Decorate and landscape your home and garden exactly how you want it.
• Benefit from the latest construction technologies and codes, such as engineer-designed foundations, soil tests and house frames that allow for movement based on soil types and weather variations.
• Hickinbotham offers a 25-year structural guarantee on new homes, and many of the products within the home are covered by warranties and guarantees.
• Less on-going maintenance.
• Building in a new estate can make good financial sense, and depending on the area, can often generate an excellent return on investment.

Buying an established home

• What you see is sometimes not what you get. Latent defects are often hard to detect, so inspect homes with a keen eye.
• Check the structural integrity of the home as many older dwellings suffer from sagging roofs, cracked foundations, uneven floors and walls and wood rot.
• A pest control inspection is also a must, as are checks on the home’s wiring and plumbing – replacing these can be very expensive.
• Hazardous building materials may have been used in the construction of the home. Materials like formaldehyde, organic chloride and asbestos were commonly used in homes prior to the 1980s.
• Kitchens and bathrooms are often the first areas to date a home, so if you don’t like the look, renovations can be costly.
• New hot water systems, floor coverings and repainting may need to be considered prior to occupancy – all these things can add up if you have to update them.