Oh I’m aware of that, I’ve just seen it play out badly. “Your recourse is a lawsuit” is fine and dandy, except loooots of folks can’t afford to shell out for a lawyer after having just shelled out for the house they were supposed to get.
There’s a lot of potential for abuse in the new construction market.
Granted, there’s potential for abuse in the existing home market too, so it’s mostly a pick your poison thing.
Yes, the entire enterprise seems to be “pick your poison”.
The main reason why everything feels like a scam is that a house purchase happens maybe once or twice in a lifetime. If the entire experience sucks… you don’t care to try to fix the system, because you probably won’t interact with the system again for decades, if at all.
The people who are doing repeated selling know they can push the buyers up to the point of almost filing official complaints and almost lawyering up for lawsuits. The people aren’t going to make it an ongoing issue, because then the buyers have what they want and just wash their hands of the whole process.
And… repeat.
Yes, picking finishings and exact wall placement and which way doors opened was the “prize” for putting down 58% of the price up front. Sounded good… but then a lot of the custom finishings required upselling, and suddenly sounded less good.
Yuuuuup. It’s funny, after we closed on our house a few years ago, I had a brief notion of wanting to do it again, because now I understood the system and would know what to expect.
Overall, what you’re describing sounds similar to my experience! So, solidarity. It sucks and it’s stressful and you’ll always wonder if you made the best choices (you’ll probably make a couple of poor ones along the way), but even with that hindsight, I’d still do it.
Good luck!
I’ll be real, if you are looking at buying new construction (in most places in the US) you are probably within the realm of being able to afford a lawyer, otherwise you really shouldn’t be buying new construction.The most affordable new construction in Philly is usually around 250k, but you can buy a historic rowhome for a fraction of that price, more so depending on the neighborhood. Also if things go real bad, its probably a systemic issue for everyone else in your builder development/multiple developments so there’s probably a class action lawsuit possible.
My personal view is new construction only makes sense if you are making a lot of money/have inheritance for a first time purchase. If you are moving/upgrading after 10 years using equity from your first home then it makes more sense. I bought a 100 year old twin and got a lot more bang for my buck with some maint’ issues I need to address down the road but I know what those are from paying a relatively speaking small amount of money for a good home inspection.
Legit point about new construction!
Equity, oy, that’s a thing I’ll think about leveraging in a few years. Right now I’m keeping on the straight and narrow!
Yeah, I personally plan to be carried out of my current house in a box many years from now, lol. Truthfully we would downsize when we get old, but its the perfect size for us to raise a family in and have the space we would need.
Anyone got experience with Steam radiators? I feel like I probably need to get mine serviced and am looking for someone, but I just know so little about them generally.
If you have a garage door with extension springs, I highly recommend replacing them with a torsion spring system before they explode violently.
Old spring that tried to rip the track off the ceiling:
My experiences are summed up thusly:
Read the whole thread.
omg germans take legal language to a whole new level.
Signed the apartment buying contract at the notary office today. There’s another meeting on Thursday, then two weeks until the money comes through from the bank (or by January 6th, if there’s a delay over Christmas), then we have the keys to our new home in the forest.
It feels like it’s all happening so fast! It was only five weeks ago we even thought about looking at places.
Yeah, once it’s “go” time, it goes.
I’m excited for you two!
Any interesting plans for the space, or are you focused on procurement still?
No plans.
The only thing we need is a new kitchen counter top. Apart from that, every piece of furniture in our current apartment will fit in the new apartment, and we’ll need to buy zero other furniture or anything. After having to replace loads of stuff four years ago moving into our current apartment, you’ve no idea how happy that makes me.
We gain an extra room, so that will be an office/place for juggling gear.
I guess the only special plan is to buy a mountain bike for me and an electric bike for Juliane. I’ve not had a mountain bike for the last 15 years due to living in a big city. Moving to the forest means close access to proper bike riding opportunities, not just riding on city streets.
There’s probably like a 5 word compound they made to specifically express it, just cant find it right now.
That must be so nice to just be able to manage all the things.
My wife keeps getting more and more things for free that would otherwise go to waste. Last night she picked up a desk and wobbly old office chair. I got rid of my really nice office chair when it became clear we wouldn’t have space for a decent desk setup in the house so I was really feeling it. This is the biggest house I’ve ever lived it and sometimes it just feels like there’s not enough room for me or my 20~ cardboard boxes of things.
Thinking about it we must have at least 8 boxes of about that size just of Christmas decorations and another 3 for halloween.
From 2007 to 2016 I lived in an apartment with a 120 square metre basement, and it got filled with all the stuff that didn’t fit in my 110 square metre live/work apartment. Do you have any idea of the levels of shit that can build up?
Moving into an apartment with only a 6 square metre basement storage unit meant getting rid of loads of shit.
Now we’re moving into an apartment with no basement at all! We have an extra room which will be the office, but we don’t want the half that room just to become shit storage.
So that means loads of shit has been moved into these boxes, and it’s not all going to make the full transition to the new apartment. Once the shelves and cupboards in the new place are full, everything left over in the boxes is going into the skip.
We started the extension work yesterday to get a utility room added. When that’s done we can:
Result should be functional dining room, hallway, and playroom should be fit to start the daycare business we’re doing. Kitchen should be improved. Utility will hopefully work fine too. Back bedroom will still be full but hopefully we can sell the things in there which is currently unmanageable due to stuff blocking stuff. It’s all the folders that really suck for that one, these blocked the living room for ages before we got those shelves up.
