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Would you pay more for a new home?

Seattle Bubble has an interesting post. It says that many homebuyers in King County are apparently unwilling to

Photo courtesy of photobucket.com.
pay more for new construction than for used.  Read about it here and please tell SeattleScape if you think it’s true, and why.

This entry was posted by Lynn on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 11:16 am and is filed under Neighborhoods, Planning, Politics, Seattle lifestyle, Zoning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Dan Abrahams

    New sells for a higher price. There is the yuk factor on other folks filth that comes with used homes. Who wants to sit on their toilet and bath in their bath. The germaphobe wants new. And there are home warranties and appliance warranties as well as useful life of home components that merit a premium.

    The vanishing new home premium is a result of the pressure on new home developers to sell their inventory before the bank forecloses on them.

  • Mark Hinshaw

    I think it is always hazardous to paint everyone with the same brush.

    I think that many buyers are simply becoming more discriminating, which is a good thing. A lot of what has been put on the market in recent decades has been inflated hype. Many real estate agents were more than eager to increase their commissions by pushing grossly oversized homes that are actually poorer in quality than much older housing.

    When I recently compared new construction with what was done decades ago (prior to actually purchasing), the difference in quality was shocking. Its all been about paper thin prestige factors like bloated entries, supersized kitchens, and “bonus” rooms.

    And that relentless pushing for ever more costly and bigger houses eventually helped create the housing crisis that we are in. People were talked into buying what they really couldn’t afford. The recessionary re-set is going to change a lot of things in our society and the hyping of oversized, over-priced houses is going to be one of them.

    And no, new is not always better.

  • Matt the Engineer

    I think the new home “premium” probably goes away when you start comparing per sf. New homes are big, and so assuming the more home you buy the more you pay then new homes should be expected to be more expensive. Sure, there are also the benefits that Dan mentions, but there are benefits of existing homes too. Character and location would be the two that come to mind – new homes are often identical to each other and set out in the suburbs.

    Now, what is causing the recent change? I have no idea, but I hope it’s that people are starting to realize the value of urban housing and the huge cost of a long commute.

  • http://federalwaygraffiti.blogspot.com James

    n our experience moving up here a few years ago, the newer the house, the smaller the lot, the larger the house.

    We found this time around (and our first time around in Southern California) that the homebuilders are getting it wrong. If you’re moving out of an apartment into a place of your own, you’d like a *little* more space, but you’d also like to get some space between you and your neighbor. The new houses give a massive amount of space, but they’re right on top of one another.

    Looking at our King County yearly assessment, relatively speaking, the land has much more value than the building(s). By building fancy houses on tiny lots they are just maximizing profits but actually creating properties that are unaffordable to first-time buyers and less desirable for people moving up.