Pros and Cons of New Construction Homes in Boise Idaho

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, Realtor
208-510-0427 | Mobile
boise@chismteam.com 
Chism Team | NRDS# SP56593
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