Why do people actually buy a home

It may help the buyer avoid unexpected price increases. It's not good for you or your builder if you change your mind about the color of the granite countertops after they've already been installed. In addition, your contractor should work with you to help you reduce costs. Substituting different materials and fixtures can save thousands of dollars, so if costs are a concern, ask ahead of time if there's a cheaper alternative.

And keep in mind that anything out of the ordinary, like custom colors or ornate shape of materials, most likely will cost more.

In order to stay on schedule, it is a good idea to create a plan for keeping to a schedule with your builder and try to have a contract that includes a construction time duration, and avoid-open deadlines.

If you are out of state, you'll want to make sure your builder keeps you up to date with the progress. Even if you begin your home search set on finding the perfect existing property, you may end up deciding to build to get exactly what you want. Conversely, you may plan on building and later decide an existing home is a better fit. In either case, working with a qualified and experienced professional—whether that's a real estate agent or a general contractor—can help ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible.

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Buying an Existing Home. Schedules and Cost. Convenience vs. Advantages of Building a New Home. Better for the Environment and Recouping Investment. Risks of Building a Home. The Bottom Line. Key Takeaways It may be challenging to find a home that is in perfect condition, so if you are buying a home, you may need to factor in the costs of any updates or renovations. Building a new home allows buyers to put energy-saving measures in place.

If you are on a specific timetable, buying a home versus building one, is usually a safer choice. If I have money saved in the bank, I can't invest it in the market — and I can't grow my wealth with that money.

I don't own a house because I want to minimize unpredictable costs and variable expenses I didn't choose to take on. This frees up more of my cash to go to investments to grow my wealth. Your water heater is never going to cost you anything when you rent. But it will if you own your own home and you have to replace it — and that goes for every other appliance or physical structure in your home.

You're on the hook for maintaining, repairing, upgrading it. Sure, you could argue that rents could fluctuate from year to year — but don't forget that your mortgage can, too, along with property taxes and home insurance. If you have an ARM, the interest rate could change. Or even with a conventional mortgage, a change in property taxes or home insurance premiums could cause your monthly payment to rise.

The bottom line is that your current rent is a set expense for the term of your lease. Your current costs for homeownership are always subject to an unpredictable swing month to month. These widely varying home costs can make it more challenging to save and invest. If something happens one month, you can't call your landlord — you have to take the money you might have planned on investing, and spend it on your house instead.

A house is a big responsibility that requires a lot of care and attention — especially if you want to maintain its value over time. Of course, if your favorite thing to do is work on your house or in the yard, go for it!

But for me and many others, the inherent obligation in owning and maintaining a home means less time and energy for travel, working on hobbies or passions, or pursuing important business goals. I want to direct my money, time, and energy into what's most important to me in life. A house would eat away at all those things, and leave me with less power to choose how I spend them.

Renting your home takes away the responsibility of major renovations. My wife and I don't have conversations about "Should we buy new countertops? We don't have a big empty house we need to fill up; we rent an apartment that offers only the space we actually need. We're not necessarily minimalists, but we do seem to have far less material stuff than a lot of our home-owning friends.

And there's less attachment to the physical space because we don't own it. That doesn't mean we don't take care of it. We just don't get distracted by stuff that doesn't actually matter to us in the long run, like fancy home decor, upgrades, or renovations.

Numbers aside, there's the simple fact that I don't own a house because I don't want to. A house simply isn't conducive to how I want to live my life at this time. Financial success is as much about making smart financial decisions as it is about tuning in to what's important to you — and not following someone else's path because it's what you think you should do.

The conversation isn't about, "buy a single family home or invest. The problem with homeownership is that it throws a lot of extra expenses into your cash flow. It also leaves you vulnerable to unpredictable expenses and distractions that eat away at what's available to invest.

With renting, you have an expected, predictable expense from year to year that you can plan around which makes it easier to capture the difference between your income and expenses and invest that amount. For both financial and lifestyle reasons, I'm happy to continue renting.

It allows me more freedom and flexibility in how I spend my energy, time, and of course, money. Eric Roberge is a certified financial planner and the founder of Beyond Your Hammock. For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation. Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts.

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Millennials, who want to visit different places—say, Alibaug, Pawna, some place in Uttarakhand, a beach home in Goa or down South—are the ones who opt for renting out a place," says Devendra Parulekar, Founder, SaffronStays. The pros of renting out a place is that one doesn't really have to commit to a particular place, but at the end of the day, it is still not your home.

Remember, rental outgo is a dead investment in the sense that it pays for an immediate need but generates no returns. The outbreak of Coronavirus in India impacted the real estate sector in various ways. For instance, the nationwide lockdown, following the outbreak, led to a sudden halt in the development work, the restrictions to move around hampered sales between March and May , and new launches also came down across cities. The Coronavirus pandemic has certainly shaken up the industry.

Corporate developers and tech-driven brokerages now have a clear edge as they are able to showcase properties online and also complete a major part of the transaction process. The quality of interactions has improved significantly even as the cost of lead acquisition has reduced.

Going forward, even after the pandemic is controlled, dependence on physical site visits, face-to-face discussions and transactions will be significantly reduced," says Puri. The Coronavirus crisis has also given a sharp impetus to the consolidation process underway in Indian real estate, giving leading developers and consultancies an even greater edge as the market navigates headlong into digital mode.