Choose Your New Home Upgrades Wisely
Upgrades, upgrades, upgrades.
If you’re building a new home in San Antonio, you’ll eventually get to the point where the builder sends you to their showroom and you will be dazzled, delighted, and amazed at all the choices for upgrades. Everything from carpet to tile, trees to shrubbery, architectural details to number of bedrooms, faucets to toilets – you name it, there’s an upgrade available for you to purchase. With all these choices available to you, how do you upgrade your new dream home without breaking the bank?
When purchasing a home that is yet to be constructed, you are faced with many choices. Each choice comes with a price tag. Although many builders in San Antonio will give incentives in order to encourage you to upgrade some of the items in your home, wise choices of what to upgrade can save you a lot of money and give you room to upgrade to some of the more premium choices.
Upgrade now or later?
Because builders have a pretty good mark up on their upgrades (it’s where a lot of the profit in new home construction is), most things you will add-on are going to cost you more than if you did them yourself or had a handyman or contractor do them for you. That faucet you love so much in the showroom? It might be a lot cheaper to stop by Lowe’s and pick it up and install it yourself. Think about the things you can do on your own. Are you handy enough to switch out a light fixture or faucet? Then you might want to consider saving those upgrades for later and doing them yourself.
Focus on the big ticket items as much as you can. Flooring, adding extra rooms, architectural details, adding a fireplace, adding outlets, adding a hose bib to the front or back of the home. Anything that might be covered up by drywall during the building process – outlets and cable hookups are always a good example. If you don’t want vinyl in the kitchen and bathrooms, upgrade to tile. Pay that extra for thicker padding under the carpet or softer “premium” carpets. Add wood flooring – these are all items that are costly and can inconvenience your family while being done at a later date.
Think of your plan for living there. Can you live with the cheap faucet in the kitchen for a few months until you decide to spend the money and go buy a new one that you install over a weekend? Try and think of your future resale too. Although you like the TV on that wall, would someone prefer it on the other wall – the one without the outlet? Even if you’re not putting in ceiling fans, maybe you should have the switches wired for them – just in case you do want them or the future buyer of your home wants them. These are the new home upgrades you should be purchasing now.
We all want to move in to our perfect dream home and not have to lift a finger and there are some who can afford to upgrade everything and not even blink an eye. Most people don’t have a limitless supply of cash though, so knowing what to upgrade in your new home can save you money and help you create sweat-equity in your home in the long run. By making smart choices today, you can avoid high mark-up costs and work on building your dream home – one faucet and light fixture at a time.
photo courtesy of mel0808johnson
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Comments
Hi.
Dont you think that even for a handy man it would be better to hire a professional for some upgrades? For example flooring. It mights cost you too much time and frazzle your nerves.
YourDreamHouse – There are certainly some upgrades that are left to professionals. It’s really up to the skill level and comfort of the homeowner. For me personally, I can tile but I could never install carpet. I can install baseboards, but won’t touch crown moulding with a ten foot pole. I can swap electrical outlets and switches, but would never run a new electric line. I can put in a new faucet, but wouldn’t mess with drains.
Homeowners do need to learn some of the more basic handyman skills though, in my opinion. A house will surprise you at all the wrong times and knowing things (from some experience) such as water shut offs, what circuit breaker is what – things like this typically are learned over time while being your own handyman and upgrading things around the house.
My main point in the post is about cost savings. Why pay the builder a high markup for a faucet when you can buy it cheaper at Lowe’s and install it yourself? I say tckle the big ticket items first when upgrading your newly built home – flirting would be a great example as would anything structural.
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