I've held a Nebraska real estate license since 1990 (see ScottYahnke.com). I've also had 2 homes built for my family & me, the first in 1985 & my current home in 1999. I'm a lifelong Omaha, NE resident who has owned/lived in a total of 4 homes since 1975.
I also "flipped" a home in 2001 that I purchased for $35,000, spent $7,000 on while doing most of the work myself, & sold for $86,000. I like to refer to this project as "The Cathouse from Hell," & I don't mean that it was a former brothel! This place had serious issues with it due to the number of cats that had been allowed to reside in it. But I took on the project because I felt confident I could get this otherwise fine property in a great neighborhood in shape for its next owners. And this happened when a teacher & her family purchased the home, glad to be able to move right in with no additional work necessary (as she told me would have been the case with the other homes they had looked at in the neighborhood).
In my experience as a homeowner & a REALTOR, I have come to some unequivocable conclusions about the condition of so many of the homes built in the Omaha area (& probably also around the country) during the last 15 years or so. "Big-box square footage," I like to call them, with the main focus on size over sustainability & energy efficiency. When a person "awakens," as I have, through the everyday practical experience of home ownership & its circumstances, I decided over 2 years ago that I would dedicate my efforts in real estate to advocating for better built homes that focus on "the inside out & the ground up," instead of "from the outside in" (i.e. what one sees when s/he walks up to & into the model home, which the builder uses to show off his/her bells & whistles, high-end finishes, decorating, window coverings, landscaping, etc.).
This is what is wrong with most new-construction homes: the public is at a disadvantage in two critical areas from the time they walk into a typical model home. The first disadvantage is that most people who purchase a new home build are comparing where they currently live to the "new home," & in most cases simply believe that the new one will be "so much better" than their current home because the new one to them represents their dreams, & they certainly didn't dream of "minimum-quality-to-meet-codes-&-get-past-any-warranty-period" construction as they considered their next, new home!
The second disadvantage many buyers face is assuming they can rely on the builder to "take care of" the issues of build quality, sustainability, & energy efficiency for them. My goodness! Time & again I've seen or felt this attitude/assumption coming from buyers, & I just want to get in their faces & heads & tell them to wake up & realize that unless they know about what goes into the build of their home, especially what they can't see, they can just get that Pollyanna idea right out of their minds!
Nice rant, eh? Well, for now, that's where I'll stop. My next posting will continue with the insight I've gotten into the Omaha-area builder mentality. And for sure, Dear Reader, don't think you're immune from these human-nature realities just because you live somewhere else!
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