When you can't agree on a house, what do you do?

[BellyBelly]

Thats the story I hear from everyone. Building always has hidden expenses and takes longer than initially quoted. One of my DP's workmates said after building 2, he'd rather buy established now. I also know a fair few who have built and are struggling financially. With extra costs on top of building, usually buying at your top borrowing capacity, interest rate rises etc, they cant even afford to go out. Can happen with a home too, but usually the surprises are not so expensive (but not always I would imagine).

[Netix]

Kelly; I think I should be wishing you luck!

Chody; we have not built before, so thank you for any extra info. We would be building a kit home, if that makes any difference to anything. And i'm not sure if the Man has taken all those little things, like curtains, extra shelving, etc, etc. But I am sure he would have. Mack's namesake is a builder, and I am sure will inform the Man of the little things that he needs to know.

I also imagine that maintaining an existing house, even repairs and creating an extra bedroom or something for the Boy would be cheaper han building a new house.

[Aussiegirl777]

When we bought our house together DP and I had our list of 'essential must haves'. These are the things that we had to have in order to seriously look at putting an offer in. They were, to us, the big things. I needed 2 living areas and DP needed a double garage and a big shed. We looked at lots of houses for a long, long time until we found what we were after, everything else besides those 3 things we would easily compromise on.

[~TT40~]

we are the same Aussiegirl. we each have a couple of things that are a must, no questions, and don't even think about a place until it meets both of our lists. (although 90% of the things are on both our lists.) but maybe think of a few things you must have, have him think of a few things you must have and see if this place meets those things. although obviously building will be easier to meet the list... but depending what those things are, might not be possible even building a place.

[LuluHB]

FWIW, when we built it was finished ahead of schedule, and that was during the huge building boom in Perth so while there are plenty of horror stories out there, its not always the way. There are however lots of extra costs above the price given to you when you look at a display home for example.

DH and I have always had different ideas on what we want. When we were looking at display homes when we were going to build there were hundreds of houses we looked at that we couldn't agree on, even with variations to the design. The house we eventually settled on was a home we both loved, but it took us a while to get there. It was a modern house, and my first love is the old style with big verandahs etc, but the house had a ton of features still that I loved about it.

We then decided to move and looked at both building again (did our own design from scratch) as well as established. DH's problem is that he by his own admission can't see past what is right in front of him, whereas I am good at stripping it bare of awful furniture, paint, curtains etc so there were huge disagreements. Again, it took us a very long time before we finally found a house that we both liked the bones of.

So, its compromise. By both of you. And FWIW, you live on the inside of your house, so while you may not be able to get a true heritage look on a new house, you can get a pretty good job and then furnish and finish it appropriately to complete the look.

Good luck. Its tough when you are way apart on such an important and expensive decision

[Astrid]

I also imagine that maintaining an existing house, even repairs and creating an extra bedroom or something for the Boy would be cheaper han building a new house.

Tough call that one.

We are in the old farmhouse. 4 years ago we looked at adding on a extra room and extending our bedroom to add an ensuite. We just want the extension to lock-up, as DH is quite capable of the rest. Back then it came in at $60,000. We then looked at everything else that need to be done to the house. Pretty much every room stripped back and one again. We looked at those figures and the figures of building another 3 bedroom house on the site and they pretty much are the same. The added bonus of building for us, is that we can build a layout that is more suited to us and in materials that we love (strawbale). Add to that all the energy efficient, sustainable features that can go into a new build, we would be saving money with ongoing expenses.
Thankfully the fire over lay stuff wont affect us too much, we can deal with extra tank and straw bale properly done is super fire resistant (so no change needed there), we just have to think about how to do the decking. It is a pain though, as when we bought the fire overlay stopped short of our place, but now it includes us, Ash Wednesday did go through our property though and took out many farm houses around here.